


Dangan Trick (Ishimondo/Ghost Trick Crossover)

by CharlotteML



Category: Dangan Ronpa, Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ghost Trick Fusion, Character Turned Into a Ghost, Crossover, Don't read this if you haven't played it, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Ishida refers to himself as a plural, M/M, MAJOR GHOST TRICK SPOILERS, POV Multiple, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-08
Updated: 2017-04-12
Packaged: 2018-09-15 17:49:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 28
Words: 37,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9249083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CharlotteML/pseuds/CharlotteML
Summary: Ishimaru wakes up after his death, surrounded by the corpses of his classmates, with the ability to go back in time to fix someone's death... of course this time he WILL save Mondo! But little does he know the complicated chain of events he's about to set off...(Ishimondo/Ghost Trick crossover. It's set after Ghost Trick's epilogue so pretty much spoils it completely.)(Set in an alternate version of the killing game, where Junko isn't the Mastermind. Short chapters with a different POV each time. Character development happens at breakneck speeds as a result.)





	1. (Kiyo POV)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies if a a DR/Ghost Trick crossover has been done already! But how I resist giving Ishi his chance to go back and rescue Mondo like he wanted!  
> This is more of a prologue chapter. It might be a bit of a slow start as the chapters are so short, but I have 13 of them pre-written so will be updating twice a week, at least to start with. I'm hoping there's enough suspense and mystery to warrant making you wait rather than dumping it all on you as a huge one-shot.  
> MAJOR spoilers for Ghost Trick, and it's written assuming the reader has played and finished it (Which I highly recommend you do! Or read/watch a Let's Play). Chapter 2 will go into more details.  
> And finally, apologies if you read the tumblr post I made when I first had the idea for this, because it may have spoilt certain aspects of this story that will be considered twists later (but it didn't spoil the biggest twists I have planned.)

“ _Why do these idiots keep tryin’ ta talk to us?”_ Mondo growled in his head as a note was slipped under the door, “ _Didn’t we tell ‘em to fuck off?”_

He… or they…? _Ishida_ had actually told them to _fudge off._ But the point still stood! Why couldn’t they just let… Ishimaru’s and Mondo’s souls enjoy each other’s company!? Why did Naegi and everyone else keep looking at him… _them_ with such _pity_ in their eyes… It… it was annoying! It made them feel _weak!_ And everyone knew Mondo _hated_ feeling weak, didn’t they!? So why did they all have to keep being so _inconsiderate!?_

 _“_ But it would be rude not to at least _acknowledge_ this… and it might be something important…” Their Ishimaru part was worried.

They picked it up… They could always ‘acknowledge’ it by telling the sender to _Fudge_ _off,_ after all…

Ishimaru felt it was far too vague for what it was discussing, but Mondo wouldn’t have… _didn’t_ care! He wou… _was_ too focused on the main message: ‘I’ve found a way out! Meet in the Physics room at 6am!’

 _“YEAH! A way out!_ ” Mondo’s soul cheered.

 _“It’s too good to be true… it’s likely a trap…”_ Ishimaru fretted.

“ _SO!? We’re STRONG! We’ll just walk into their stupid trap and PUNCH our way outta it!”_ Mondo told the useless wimp…

That was right… _Mondo_ wouldn’t have just stood around, screaming uselessly while his Kyoudai got executed… And neither would Ishida! _They’d_ have smashed that fucking cage of death to _bits_ or died trying! And _they_ was going to go and meet at that physics room and either find a way out or beat the crap outta whoever was tricking people like this!

…

They arrived at 6am, Ishimaru’s time obsession making them far more punctual than Mondo would have been by himself. The physics room was empty and a quick look around the room convinced the worrisome side of them that it was safe… for now, at least. But where was everyone else?

 _“They should be here… or SOME of them! Asahina and Kirigiri are ALWAYS on time!”_ Ishimaru fretted.

 _“So it’s a trap! Who cares!? We’ll just punch ‘em when they come in! I just wish they’d turn up already so we can go back to bed!”_ Mondo complained… Although Ishida weren’t tired so _would_ Mondo have minded being up at this time of the morning…? maybe he’d have preferred to go get breakfast as they were already up? He did like his food…

 _“Yeah… yeah, breakfast sounds good!”_ Mondo agreed… Ishimaru had been too stupid to eat, so of _course_ they were both starving! Now when the heck was this stupid trap happening! Ishida were _hungry darnit!_

There was _finally_ the sound of the door opening behind him!

“Well it’s about fudgin’ ti…” They started to turn and face whoever was planning to challenge them…

Except the person… _Yamada…_ wasn’t planning a fair fight, they both realised just before the hammer hit them over the head...

“ARRGH!” They yelled as they fell to the fall… It _hurt! His head hurt! Their_ head hurt! This was what Mondo did to Chihiro? How could he have done that!?

…Why wasn’t Mondo’s soul answering him? Had Ishimaru upset him? He didn’t mean it! _Kyoudai!?_ Where _was_ he!? He’d lost Mondo’s soul! He had to get up and find it!

But he could barely move enough to crawl… and Yamada wasn’t helping him! He just shrieked and clutched his hammer when Ishimaru tried to reach out to him… _Why wouldn’t he help him find Mondo!?_

 _He’s trying to kill us…_ Ishimaru finally remembered… _Our last body’s dying…_

 _No… NO!_ They couldn’t die! They had to get out of here like Mondo wanted so desperately to! They had to become Prime Minister, and lead the Diamonds and prove to everyone that they were _better_ than Toranosuke _and_ Daiya! They couldn’t die! _THEY COULDN’T DIE!_

…But as the world turned black and a blue light shone on him, he realised they weren’t going to live either… But… Ishimaru didn’t want to die alone! Not now he’d had a friend! He needed to find Mondo’s soul again…

But he couldn’t find it… and he blacked out instead…

… … …

 _“Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!”_ Was that a dog barking? Maybe Mondo would be be with it… he liked dogs…

Ishimaru forced himself to see, somehow… He didn’t think he was actually _seeing_ though, he was just… aware of what was around him… Two flames, red and green floated by his side and there were seven… _orange lights?_ Around him: On his left was one at his level, and another above that, to his right were two more on his level, and two above, as if they were in two rows, with him on the bottom row, and directly _above_ him…

These weren’t _lights!_ They were _souls!_ And _that_ one was _Mondo!_

“Kyoudai!” He reached up, willing himself closer to Mondo… they needed to be back together! They needed to be Ishida again…!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! (Assuming I'm not the only fan of Ishimondo and Ghost Trick out there...)


	2. (Sissel POV)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains spoilers for the biggest twist in Ghost Trick, and probably won't make any sense whatsoever if you haven't finished the game. I seriously recommend you stop reading this now unless you've actually finished Ghost Trick.  
> This chapter's mostly just a summary how this AU is different from the normal DR universe and how the GT characters fit into it.

_“Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!”_

Missile’s capacity for barking never failed to amaze Sissel… the Pomeranian had been yapping at that guy for the last few hours without so much as taking a break to breathe…

Not that he needed to breathe, what with him being a ghost of course. And Sissel couldn’t blame him… the pair of them had been trapped up here by _those two_ for over a year now, with no cores that could let them travel any further than the lights in the room below… and even then, only Missile could get that far. Sissel was stuck stalking the room his body was trapped in.

And even once one of _them_ had started bring bodies into the room, it was still no use… their corpses were all up _here…_ going back in time to try and save them had resulted in the pair of them sitting in the room, with no way of knowing even _where_ the death had even happened, let along how to get to it!

Eventually one of the first two girls brought here- the one with two tails- had woken up and told Sissel what she knew… they’d come to this school, only to be knocked out and had then woken up, found it deserted except for the 16 of them that were supposed to be in a class together, and had then been informed by a bear machine that they’d be trapped there forever unless they could kill a classmate and get away with it.

He and Missile couldn’t really understand why that was a problem… All the food you could eat and clean bedding with nothing to do but nap? A little dull, eventually, but a group of cats or dogs would have just established some territories and had the occasional scrape…

“Well, like, it was fine at first! Like… it was scary that someone had managed to do it, and we all kinda wondered if someone really _was_ gonna off one of us, but after a couple of days we didn’t think anyone was gonna do anything crazy, ‘cause we could just wait for the cops or something!” Two-tails had shrugged when he’d said it, “But then that bear showed up again and showed each of us these videos with people we cared about… like, he’d managed to capture my _boyfriend!_ So then we all wanted to know what had happened to them! …Does that make sense to you? Do cats care about that sort of thing?” She’d asked him.

“…I have people I try to look after.” Sissel had admitted. “But they wouldn’t want me to _kill_ for them either…”

“Well! I didn’t wanna either! I only died ‘cause I lost my temper and tried to destroy that stupid bear!” Twin-tails had moaned, “But I guess Kuwata felt differently…”

‘Kuwata’ was the guy who Sissel thought looked like a red lion. Twin-tails had guessed that he was the one to kill off ‘Maizono’ the other, blue haired and still sleeping, girl in the room with them… Although even once he’d woken up he was still denying it… just shouting over and over that it wasn’t him and he must have been set up.

“I hope Mutsuda’s alright though…” Two-tails had sighed, “Who is it _you_ wanna look after?”

“Miss Kamilla!” Missile had barked instantly, “Have you seen her?”

“Kamilla? Kamilla Jowd? The Physicist?” Twin Tails had got it right!

“Yes! Yes, yes, yes!” Missile had started jumping between the different door handles in excitement. “Where _is_ she!?”

“I dunno…” Twin tails had turned gloomy… “I only know about her because my boyfriend mentioned her a couple of times… he didn’t even say anything about her having pets…”

That had made sense… Kamilla had brought the two of them, and a large chuck of the Temsik meteorite with her to research its radiation and how it granted Ghost Tricks to people, something she’d managed to pick up on once Missile had died close to his own shard of Temsik and been unable to resist trying to ‘play’ with her, despite Sissel’s, Yomiel’s and her father’s attempts to keep everything related to the realm of the dead hidden from her. But she could hardly let it be known that she owned two pet ghosts, so they’d been under orders not to leave her bedroom.

They’d followed the rule, obviously, but then one day one of _them_ had broken into the room, trapped Sissel and somehow managed to identify and pick up every item Missile tried to escape to before hauling them both up into this icy room and leaving them there.

And they were careful as well, or must be able to identify cores, as they never brought anything possessable into the room unless it was staying there, like the plastic tub with the face of a man with corn instead of hair that he'd brought along with the little green lady a few days ago... They turned out to be ‘Oowada’ and ‘Fujisaki’ apparently. They were slow to wake as well, although corn-man was getting restless now. But Missile and Sissel had lost interest in him once the next set of bodies arrived… A small black woman, a big round guy and a man in white with black shoes… and a fiery soul like his and Missile’s…

Another ghost… one who maybe, _just maybe,_ might have a trick that could get them _out_ of here!

Missile had started barking at his soul to wake up ever since _he_ had left…

 _“Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!”_ Missile carried on… it almost felt like it might work soon! _“Wake up! Wake up! Wa…_ Hey! Get back here!” Missile’s bark turned to a whine as the white and black ghost suddenly hopped from his body into the tub with Corn-hair’s soul in it… Guess they were taking the conversation to _his_ psyche then!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! I hope the set up makes sense? (And also that having Kamilla be the Ultimate Physicist isn't too much of a stretch... I figure anyone who can make contraptions like she does at a young age must have a pretty intuitive sense of physics)


	3. (Mondo POV)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's occurred to me that I forgot to mention last chapter that for the sake of the plot, I've extended the amount of time after a person's death that they can be saved to more than a single day, as it is in Ghost Trick. Otherwise this fic would be super depressing as Taka arrived and discovered he couldn't do anything to help Mondo.

What the fuck had happened to him? Who _was_ he even?

“Kyoudai…!” He could hear a voice shouting… was that to _him?_ Was his name ‘Kyoudai?’… That didn’t sound right… it was familiar, but it wasn’t his _name…_

“Mondo!” Ah! _That_ was his name! _Now_ he remembered! He was Mondo Oowada, leader of the Crazy Diamonds… and killer of his brother… and _Chihiro…shit…_

“Yes… it’s definitely you!” And _that_ voice was his kyoudai, Kiyotaka Ishimaru… who’d refused to believe he could have killed someone and had been screaming himself hoarse while Mondo’s body was melting…

“Aha! Now our souls are back together…”

And now they must _both_ be dead… Godammit! How could he have been such a coward! He’d got so scared he’d killed Chihiro without even _thinking_ about it! And then he hadn’t even been man enough to own up to it, so Taka had thought it must be someone _else_ who was guilty, right up to the point where he’d been voted guilty and dragged off to die!

(“Now I’m _… We’re_ back! _Fudge yeah_!”)

Why couldn’t he have just owned up to it in the first place? Did he really think he could have got away with it? And then what? He’d have just let Taka get killed with the rest of them? Some fucking friend _he_ was! He’d been willing to kill his _kyoudai_ along with ten other people just to save his own skin, and then he’d failed that so spectacularly that Taka had probably been an easy target, wallowing in grief…

(“Can’t do _sugar_ … But we’re _back!”)_

He was _Mondo Oowada_ … a fucking coward who needed to beg his friend for forgiveness…

He could feel himself shifting into form as he realised who he was… and soon he was looking across at… well, he was _dressed_ like Kiyotaka, and you _could_ say he had the same _face_ as Kiyotaka… if you were willing to ignore the uncharacteristic scowl, the white hair and the fucking _fire_ coming out of his eyes!

“Taka? What the fuck happened to you?” Mondo asked, all thoughts of apology gone out of the window.

“Mondo? What the fudge are ya _doing!?_ ” He snapped, in a weird voice… almost like Taka was trying to sound like _him…_ “Why’re you trying ta leave? I-is it b-because I got us killed? But _you_ were one who said we should do what the note said!”

“Taka… what note? What’re you talking about? And why’re ya tryin’ ta talk like _me?_ ”

“I… We _are_ you!” Taka grabbed his coat and tried to shake him… “D-don’t you remember? Our souls bonded! We’ve been together for days! I-it’s been _great!_ So why’re you trying ta leave _now?_ ”

“Taka…” He… had he convinced himself that Mondo had never left him? Just so he’d not feel so alone?

“I’m not ‘ _Taka’!”_ Taka yelled, “ _We’re Ishida! Kiyondo_ Ishida! And we’re a million times better than that useless waste of space Ishima…”

“SHIT THE FUCK UP!” Mondo snapped, “Don’t you _dare_ call yourself useless! _You’re my Kyoudai!_ And I wanna see _you, TAKA,_ not some fucking ugly mashup of you and a goddamn _murderer!”_

“Ah…” Taka murmured softly, his hair and eye slowly turning back to normal… “You… you aren’t a…”

“Yeah, I _am!_ ” Mondo sighed, “I fucked up and killed Chihiro… and then I was too much of a coward to let ya know I was gonna be leaving ya…”

“But you didn’t!” The weird Taka looked like he coming back again. “Not for long! There was a computer… it helped me find your soul!”

“Taka…” Mondo sighed.

“His soul hasn’t left that tub since he got here three days ago.” A man’s voice said.

They both turned to the voice… only to spot nothing but a black cat in a red scarf and the most fuckin’ adorable little white and brown fluff ball Pomeranian Mondo had ever seen! Lookit that little happy face and waggy tail!

“How the fudge would _you_ know? You’re a _cat!_ Ya probably slept through him leaving!” Taka was still arguing, although he looked like he was starting to doubt himself a bit... “You sleep for, what? Sixteen hours a day, ain’t it?”

“We’re _ghosts…_ we don’t sleep.” The cat… said? It was at this point that Mondo realised that they weren’t really _talking_ to each other… it was more they could all hear each other’s thoughts… So these cute little pets were dead as well? Was _that_ why they could all talk to each other? 

“ _He’s_ the one whose been sleeping…" The cat carried on. "Even when we tried to bring him back to life…”

“Bring… bring him back to life?” Taka started returning to normal again, as hope built in his eyes…

“How the fuck can ya do _that?_ ” Mondo asked… this had to be too good to be true! Or some sick idea of a joke…

“Well… there’s this meteorite, called Temsik, that has certain… powers over the realm of the dead…” The cat started. “If you die near it, your soul gets the ability to do certain… tricks.”

“Like go back in time and save people!” Holy shit the doggie had the adorable fuckin' voice he’d ever heard!

“Go… go back in time…?” Taka sounded awestruck… “To save you…?” He looked up at Mondo’s face, still holding on to his coat, with tears starting to brim in his scarlet eyes… “Yes… _Yes!_ Another chance! And this time… this time I’ll _save_ you! I promise you Mondo, _THIS TIME I’LL SAVE YOU!”_

There was the noise of a clock ticking in the air, which turned red with streaks of gold that started spinning around them, as grains of blue sand floated upwards past them and the ‘clock’ sounds start ticking backwards, faster and faster, until suddenly the whole thing stopped and they were back in the room…

“What… what _was_ that?” Taka asked.

“That was you, going back to four minutes before his death.” The cat nodded at Mondo.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Sorry it's still a little slow-going in these early chapters.


	4. (Missile POV)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a reminder of how the 'four minutes before death' thing works in the game (because it's relevent to this chapter and the rest of the story):  
> -The ghosts show up where the corpse of the person is, not where the death happens (hence why Sissel and Missel can't do anything, they're stuck up on the fifth floor).  
> -Ghosts without the power of time travel can still tag-along with those who do.  
> -They can restart as often as they like.  
> -Also in the game there's a dramatic 3 second countdown right before the person dies, which I always assume the ghosts are aware is happening, like they get a 'oh no, time is running out!' feeling, which happens here.

“Hah… Ahahaha! We… we actually did it?” The happy white boy laughed, “Now what? How do we stop Mondo from dying?”

“See… that’s the problem… You might have noticed we can’t actually _move_ … we just jump from possessing…”

Oh boy… Sissel was going to have to explain how all the tricks worked to them now… And the white guy had lots and lots of questions and now they were yapping on and on about what happened after someone was saved and where they thought poor Miss Kamila had hidden her shiny rock…

 _Oh!_ But at least the funny hair man was giving him pettings! Yay! He was a good petter, lots of stritches behind the ear, and he let Missile move his body to get his hand in the right place for some really _nice_ strokings!

“Any more questions?” Sissel finally asked…

“Who’s a good doggie?”

“I am! I’m Missile, I’m the best dog! I’m an ace Pomerarian!” Missile answered the bread-hair guy.

“Fuck yeah you are! I’m Mondo, nice ta fuckin' meetcha!” Mondo barked, while giving more pettings…

“Ah… I forgot to introduce myself as well. I’m Kiyotaka Ishimaru!”

“Ki…yo…?” What meanie had given him that big long name!?

“Just call him Taka!” Mondo whispered to him.

“Okay! Nice to meet you Taka and Mondo!” Missile gave them a nice bark! “I’m Missile!”

“You already…” Taka started.

“And I’m Sissel.” Sissel cut him off. “So… do you have any idea what your trick is?”

“Ah… I’m not sure?” The white boy worried. “How did _you_ find…Ah!” He suddenly jumped. “ _Oh no!_ I…. we have to save Mondo before…!”

“Oops, times up!” Missile barked, as they returned to the realm of the dead like they always did when they failed to save someone in time.

“W-what!? B-but I didn’t even _start_ trying to save Mondo!” Taka howled, “H-how could I be so _stupid!_ I _knew_ we only had four minutes! I should have…!”

“Relax! We can just go back again.” Sissel purred, stretching calmly.

“Wait… you mean time was, y’know, _happening_ then?” Mondo growled, “’cause that felt like a fucking _long_ four minutes!”

“…You’re right… that _was_ a long time…” Sissel agreed. “Kiyotaka, try to save Mondo again.”

“Ah… Alright. _This_ time, I’ll not waste time and I _will_ save you, Kyoudai!” Taka nodded and time went back again.

“Ok… Missile? Do you remember what the clock downstairs looked like when we tried to save Mondo last time?” Sissel asked, and look super pleased when Missile nodded! “Great, go see what it looks like now…”

“Okay?” Missile did as he was told, jumping through the floor to the core of one of the lights on the room below. Although he didn’t know why Sissel needed it checked… Wouldn’t it be the same?

Ah! No it _wasn’t_ the same! “Sissel! Sissel! It’s different now! The big hand is on the line and the circle instead of just after the two lines!

“So… it’s at least 5, possibly 6 minutes earlier…”  Taka said.

“That’s odd… you can go back _10_ minutes then? Not four?” Sissel asked.

“Hah! Trust _you_ ta get places early!” Mondo thought it was a funny trick!

“Well… it’s good to know, but it’s of little use for getting out of this room! Let’ see if I have any other tricks!” Taka barked and started jumping around different cores, trying to get them to do _something…_ And getting really, really upset when they didn’t…

“No… _NO!_ _AAARRGGHHHH!”_ He howled, when time ran out again… “There must be _something_ I can do! I… I promised you I’d save you!”

“Taka... It’s okay… it’s not your fault…” Mondo tried to pet him. “You just ain’t got the right trick…”

“NO! One more try! I’ll… I’ll think of _something!_ I’ll save you _this_ time!”

Time went backwards again… and Taka was soon in the cores of the lockers, thrashing about angrily… with no effect.

Poor boy… Not being able to save his friend…

“Useless…” He growled… Was his fur turning white? What was that red stuff in his eye? “Useless, useless, _useless!”_

 “You ain’t useless!” Mondo barked back at him.

“ _Yes he is!”_ The white boy yelled back… and it looked like the _angry_ white boy was back again! “He get’s ta fudgin’ _time travel_ and he _still_ can’t do anything ta help ya!”

“Well, what’re we supposed to do? There’s no way _down_ there!” Sissel hissed.

“Then I’ll fudging _make_ one!” The white boy roared, making a curvy stick on another stick appear and hitting the floor with it…

It took a few blows… but he managed to dig a hole through it! _Wow!_ He’d make a good dog!

“What the…!? _T_ _hat’s_ your trick!?” Sissel’s back arched at the big hole.

“See, Kyoudai! We _are_ better than that waste of space!” The angry boy yipped, before using his digging tool to knock down a table and make it fall halfway down the whole, so they could jump through it. “And we’re gonna break down every goshdarn thing that stops us from getting to _you!_ ” He added, pouncing down the hole, quickly followed by the rest of them…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realise giving Kiyondo such an over-powered trick is kinda lazy, but there was no way I was going to be able to make up proper puzzles, be prepared for a lot of my 'going back in the past' sections to be solved far more easily than in the game. I wanted this more to be about the time-travel and mystery. (Plus I just liked the idea of subverting the subtly of the game by giving Kiyondo the ability to smash stuff up with Mondo's pickaxe and then jump through the resulting debris to the next thing to smash)
> 
> Also, don't worry, the obvious 'why don't they rescue Chihiro to save Mondo from being executed' aspect will be brought up later. Ishi's not in the right mental state to think like that right now though.


	5. (Past Makoto POV)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a reminder that people in the past behave as they would have in the past, even if their present self is a ghost who has travelled back in time to change stuff.  
> Also this is the past version of Makoto's POV because I thought it would be interesting to show the past being changed from a normal, uninformed person's POV.

“I TOLD YOU TO WAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIITTTTTTTTT!!!!”

Oh man… poor Ishimaru! He’d been arguing Oowada’s innocence more than _Oowada_ had at the end there… and even now his friend had _admitted_ to it and been proclaimed guilty, he was begging, pleading and trying to _order_ Monokuma not to go ahead with the 'punishment'.

This was terrible… Oowada wouldn’t… or maybe _couldn’t_ even look at him… he was just waiting quietly for his execution to start… what was he thinking? Could Makoto even _try_ to guess what he was going through? He was obviously feeling guilt for what he’d done… But he couldn’t tell if it was more from failing to live up to his brother, causing Chihiro’s needless death, or the thought that he’d probably doomed Ishimaru to walking around in silent grief like Ikusaba had been doing for days since her sister had been ‘punished’ for attacking Monokuma…

Either way, he still didn’t say a word, even as Monokuma chained him to the back of a motorcycle and drove it towards that giant steel cage…

What the hell kind of punishment had the mastermind come up with _this_ time? It started with Monokuma being ejected from the driver’s seat, just before the bike entered the cage and the door shut behind it, leaving Oowada circling the inside of the cage…

Then the nearby wall suddenly exploded inwards, showering the cage with debris. One big chunk of it destroyed the tip of one of the four pillars surrounding it, leaving it sparkling with crackles of electricity that petered out pointlessly. Several other bits of rubble slammed into the cage, knocking the bike off of them and causing Oowada to crash to the ground...

Then… _what the hell?_ The cage was… bending _inwards?_ By itself? It looked like something was trying to break _through_ it, but there was nothing there! What sort of weird execution _was_ this…?

“What the hell?” Monokuma growled… _wait_ … _HE_ didn’t understand what was happening? So this _wasn’t_ part of the execution? Then what _was_ happening?

“The room is haunted! Vengeful ghosts are…!” Hagakure’s guess was nonsense, but it wasn’t like anyone _else_ had any clue what was going on either, from the look of it, even _Kirigiri_ looked shocked by the development.

“No one wants to hear your stupid crap, psycho-boy!” Monokuma snapped bitterly, before the steel cage broke free from its holding and rolled through the wire fence separating the execution from the courtroom.

_“AH! Everyone RUN!”_ Makoto yelled before he and Oogami dragged Ishimaru out of the way as the giant cage rolled through the courtroom and came to rest on the opposite wall…

“Is everyone alright?” Makoto asked, nervously, which received a chorus of agreement from everyone but Ishimaru and… _oh no!_ “Ah! Where’s Ikusaba!”

“We got her!” Hina cheered from the other side of the room.

“Yeah, she’s fine! Well… y’know, as much as…”

Hagakure was cut off by a sudden _CRASH_ as the steel cage started spontaneously slammed into the wall several times until it finally broke open, releasing Oowada, who was _somehow_ unchained from the bike.

“K-kyoudai…?” Ishimaru muttered, starting to stumble over all the wreckage to his friend… “ _KYOUDAI!?”_ He gradually sped up, tripping up partway and deciding to half crawl, half scramble over the remaining debris, throwing huge scraps of it aside as he dug out Oowada… “ _Kyoudai! Mondo!_ Are you…?” He shakily tried to get Oowada’s attention, gently brushing the hair out of his face as if doing anything more than that might be the final blow that finished the biker off… “S-say something! _PLEASE!”_

“I’m fine…” Oowada coughed weakly, grimacing in pain as he did it… “You should see the shit I got up to with the gang…” He boasted through clenched teeth.

“Hah! Ahahahaha!” Ishimaru laughed and practically fell on him for a tight hug, which Oowada seemed to appreciate, even as it made him cry out in pain…

“ _Urg!_ You bastards have completely ruined my show!” Monokuma growled, “And even the entrance hall’s been destroyed? Well… no point carrying on with _this_ now! Guess I’ll just let you go and see the _lovely_ world you were all _so_ desperate to go back to… UpupupupuPUPUPUPUPU!” His got louder and louder, cutting off just before he exploded.

“So… is that it?” Hina asked, looking at the empty spot where. Monokuma had been nervously.

“I don’t know… he seemed far too smug about us getting out of here…” Kirigiri commented, “I get the feeling there’s something going on here that we’ve missed…”

Makoto couldn’t help but agree… whatever was going on here, this didn’t feel like the end of it.

But at least it was better than what had been _about_ to happen, right? Oowada and Ishimaru’s fates had certainly changed for the better!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've not much to say about this chapter, other than the fact that saving Mondo is just the start of what's going to happen in this fic, as they'll be seeing how this changes the present shortly...
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	6. (Ishi POV)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A couple of my thoughts on what happens after a person is saved in Ghost Trick, regarding the shift in timelines: (This is relevant to this chapter)  
> 1: Despite multiple playthroughs of Ghost Trick, I've never quite been sure if the ghosts and people who are rescued actually remember living during the 'new' timeline between when they got saved and when they return to the present (I.e. the period of time the game always skips over after you rescue someone). My first impression was that they DON'T remember this time frame and come back to the present with nothing but their old memories, and that is the reasoning I use in this story. (Mostly because I love the drama it causes and the 'having to figure out what's changed' aspect of time travel.)  
> 2: For some reason, when I thought of this story, I completely forgot that the locations of the ghosts when they finish rescuing someone is where they end up once they return to the present, and wrote half the story on the basis that that doesn't happen. So in this fic, when the ghosts return to the present, they end up at the place they were when they went back in time, unless they're now alive as a result of the change in time, in which case they get shifted to where ever their now-alive bodies are.  
> -Another minor change for the purpose of this fic is that Ishimaru died in the Physics lab itself in this story, not the adjacent store room as he does in game.

“We did it! WE DID IT!” Ishida both yelled… They’d _done_ it! Mondo was safe! Now they’d be able to go back to the present and they’d both be together and _alive_ again! AND out of the school! “I… I can’t believe we did it!” Ishimaru laughed…

_“Well, of course we did it!”_ Mondo’s soul was laughing at him _… “You and I can do fucking ANYTH…”_

“What’s this _we_ bullshit?” Mondo cut him off… “ _You_ were the one smashing up the school!”

“But you helped me!”  They told him, showing him the Crazy Diamonds pickaxe they’d been using. “ _Your_ soul was the one who could _break_ things! Without _that_ we’d have…”

“ _TAKA!_ Taka _listen ta me!_ ” Mondo shook them and forced them to stare into his eyes… “I’m _here! This_ is my soul! Okay?” He asked, desperately gesturing to himself… “I… ain’t been anywhere but _here!”_

“But… but I… _we… Your soul’s been TALKING to me!_ Or _us…”_ Ishida couldn’t figure out how to explain… or if they even understood it themselves…

_“_ Taka…” Mondo sighed and suddenly pulled him… _them_ into a hug… “Look… I dunno what you went through after I died… But… _I wasn’t there!”_

“Then how can we make _this!?”_ They snapped, showing him the pickaxe… “This is _Mondo’s!_ Not that weakling Ishi…”

“You’re not a _weakling!_ Ya just smashed up half the school!” Mondo snapped back at them, “And ya didn’t need _me…_ ya just needed ta _tell_ yourself you could! Even if ya pretended that voice was _me_ talking to ya, it _wasn’t!_ It was just you, _Taka,_ who saved me, _by_ _yourself!”_

Mondo panted as his speech came to an end… could that be true? Could _Ishimaru_ really have done all of _that_ by himself…?

Mondo’s soul wasn’t saying anything… maybe it really hadn’t ever said anything to him… just a voice in his head he’d deluded himself into hearing…

“You… you really think I could have done that by myself?” Ishimaru asked.

“Hell yeah! You can do _anything!_ ” Mondo squeezed him even tighter. “It’s all just effort, right? And no one puts in more effort than _you!_ So… ya just gotta _believe_ in yourself, like I do!”

“Ah…” Mondo believe that? He believed in _him!?_ “N-no one’s ever said that to me before…” Ishimaru hid his face in Mondo’s chest to hide the blush that was spreading over it.

“Well I’m sayin’ it now, so listen ta me, alright?” Mondo ordered him, and he nodded into Mondo’s chest in response.

“But… now what happens?” Mondo asked, awkwardly.

“What…? Weren’t you listening to Sissel!?” Honestly! How could he have ignored such an important discussion!

“…There was a cute doggie…” Was all the explanation Mondo had.

“A cute doggie that needed pettings!” Missile added.

Ishimaru had never seen a cat _sigh_ before… but that was what Sissel did before giving a brief explanation of what he’d already told them both… “ _Now_ we go back to the present and see how it’s changed in response to you being alive…”

“So… back to the cold room?” Mondo asked.

“No… we won’t be _in_ the cold room.” Ishimaru told him, “At least I _hope_ we won’t…” Neither of them should get killed _now,_ should they?

“Why not? That was where we _were_!”

He really _hadn’t_ understood this, had he?

“It’s probably easier to _show_ you than try to explain it… Let’s just go back and you’ll understand when we get there…” Sissel suggested, “If you would, Kiyotaka?”

“Right!” Ishimaru nodded… time to go back to the present… the present where he’d managed to save Mondo!

The air around them turned red again, and he could almost feel time speeding past them like a breeze as they headed back to the time-frame they’d come from…

And then he was sat with a book and pen in his hands and his legs stretched out in a bed, with Mondo lying asleep next to him, half his body wrapped in bandages, and the other half littered with painful looking bruises and cuts…

He’d been in such a rage, trying to get Mondo out of that cage, it hadn’t even occurred to him how much punishment he must have been taken from being rolled and bashed about like that… No wonder Mondo was asleep in the middle of the afternoon! How could he have been so careless as to risk his kyoudai’s life like that!? Even if it _was_ to save his life!

Well… at least it had worked. Mondo would heal up soon, and for now they were both alive and together again! Together enough that they were even sharing a bed, apparently…

Wait… they were sharing a bed!? _Why were they sharing a bed!?_ Had… had he and Mondo become a _thing_ during the few days they’d skipped? That would be the only reasonable explanation, wouldn’t it? Otherwise why would he have decided to write _in_ the bed instead of giving Mondo extra space to recover?

But… _why_ had they got together? They’d barely known each other a few days, and they were just friends! Even _if_ Mondo was the closest relation he’d ever had… and quite good looking… and Ishimaru had been desperate to be together with him… and they’d bonded in _soul…_ so why _not_ in body as well?

On second thoughts, it was startling quite how much sense this _was_ making to Ishimaru, he’d only known Mondo a few days, and yet for some reason he felt as if they’d been together for months or maybe even years and he couldn’t wait to get closer to him… His face was flushing at the thought of kissing Mondo, and his kyoudai had told him he could do _anything,_ so if _that_ was something he’d _wanted_ to do...

“Ngghhh… Fuckin’ hell! I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck…” Mondo stirred from his his sleep with a grunt of pain. “Taka… Is that you? Where are we?”

“Ah! Don’t try to move, you’re still recovering from the failed execution!” Ishimaru told him, as he insisted on forcing his body to sit upright regardless…

“Wha…? But that wasn’t me!” Mondo’s brows knitted in confusion.

“Well… no, your soul wasn’t there at the time… but now we’ve returned to the present, we’ve taken over the bodies of the versions of us that carried on living after I saved you!”

“So… you’re alive now?” Mondo asked.

“Yes! Because we stopped Monokuma as he tried to execute you, and broke open the door to escape, so there was no reason for Yamada to murder me in this new reality!”

“So… Everyone who died _after_ me, before we went back, is alive because now I never died?” Mondo checked.

“Yes! I saved you! So now we’re _both_ alive and… together…”

_Together…_ Sharing a bed and so close that all he’d have to do was lean forward slightly and his lips would be pressed against Mondo’s… Wait, no… he couldn’t do that!

_“You can do_ _anything!_ ” Mondo’s words from earlier flashed into his mind… “Y _a just gotta believe in yourself!_ ”

…He was right… all he had to do was believe in himself… he wanted this… so he could _get_ it! He’d saved Mondo’s life after all! It’d be his hero’s reward!

“ _AH! Taka yo…!_ ” Whatever sudden revelation Mondo had been about to share with him was cut off as Ishimaru leant forward and kissed him.

It wasn’t _much_ of a kiss, just warm lips pressing against his own, and yet it fuelled a fire within him that he’d never felt before! No _wonder_ heroes would travel distant and dangerous lands and to save their loved ones from humongous beasts if _this_ was what they got at the end of it! He’d travel back through time a hundred times and smash down _millions_ of buildings if it meant he got to feel _this_ again!

“…Taka!” Mondo pulled backwards just long enough to say his nickname before Ishimaru chased him down for another kiss, starting to get a little sloppier than before…

“Taka, STOP, will ya!?” Mondo actually _pushed_ him away this time… But _why,_ when this felt so _good_ …? “Ya should have rescued _Maizono!_ ” Mondo yelled, as if in answer to his internal question…

What!? Why should he have rescued _her…_ It was _Mondo_ he wanted to be together with! Why would he say…?

_“What? You thought **I** wanted THIS!?” _Mondo’s soul was back, and laughing at Ishimaru… _“That I’m some fucking WEAKLING who wanted rescuing and kissed by a useless asshole like YOU!?”_

“I…” Ishimaru stammered pointlessly…

“Shit… why didn’t I listen…?” Mondo was asking, “I should have stopped you…”

_“You can’t do anything by yourself, can you?” Mondo’s soul was asking him, “You couldn’t save me, and you couldn’t even pick the right person to save either!”_

“I…”

_“Well, guess we gotta fix your mistake now, right?”_ What did Mondo’s soul mean? How could they fix this without being ghosts anymore? _“Do I gotta spell out everything? Sissel figured out where that rock is, right?”_

“I’m an idiot…” Mondo cursed himself.

“No ya fucking ain’t!” Ishida snapped at him. “You’re right! We need ta go back and save the _right_ person this time!” They quickly jumped out of the bed, picked up a handy sword that they must have been given at some point and headed towards the door.

“What? What the fuck are you doing…? Nggh!” Mondo grunted as he tried to get out of the bed himself. “Taka stop! Or wait for me at least! The _real_ me…!”

Why would they bother doing _that!?_ Why make Mondo’s body hurt itself when Mondo’s soul was already coming… they were really going to have to explain this to him once they were finished saving the hot girl _Mondo_ obviously wanted…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for continuing to read. I hope it all still makes sense! (And apologies for the cliff-hanger. And the angst.)


	7. (Present Makoto POV)

Urg… where the heck was he? This building of Future Foundations was confusing… Makoto really should have brought a map…

Oh, hey! There was Ishimaru! If anyone had a map, it’d be _him!_ “Hey! Ishimaru!”

“Naegi? What the fudge do _you_ want!?”

 _Uhhhhh…_ Was that actually Ishimaru? He was dressed like him and looked like him, but there’s no way _Ishimaru_ would have spoken to _anyone_ like that!

Then again… he’d been spending a lot of time ‘looking after’ Mondo (who’d insisted on staying in Ishimaru’s room instead of taking up a bed in the hospital bay.) maybe the biker was rubbing off on him?

“I was going to ask if you had a map with you… but how’s Mondo doing?”

“We’re fine, thanks for asking!” Aww… Makoto hadn’t meant to imply he didn’t care how _Ishimaru_ was either! “But as for a map… give us a sec!” Ishimaru started rifling through his pockets and flipping through his notebook… “Fudge yeah! Who da men! Here ya go!” He cheered as he found a map slipped carefully into his notebook and showed it to Makoto, who quickly figured out he’d taken a wrong turn about three turns back…

“Thanks, Ishimaru. And look after yourself as well as Mondo, alright?” Makoto suggested.

“Hah! By the time we’re done, _everyone’ll_ be alright!” Ishimaru grinned confidently… Wow, it was amazing how much better he was doing now, than when he’d been told about the Tragedy a few days ago! Mondo must have given him some serious hope for the future for him to be that confident about it!

“Yeah! We’ll build a foundation for the future, alright!” Makoto agreed.

“Uhh… yeah, sure!” Ishimaru looked confused. “But first, d’ya know if the air purifier in the physics lab is still in one piece?”

Geez! Was he starting to help Munakata and the others with their work, _already?_ Lucky for him Makoto had heard it being discussed… “Yeah, it got transferred to division 12’s storage hangar without a problem!” Makoto told him, “It’s lucky whatever destroyed the school didn’t hit it!”

“ _Fudge_ … yeah… didn’t think of _that_ …” Ishimaru looked guilty for a moment, then shook himself out of it. “Thanks for your help, Naegi!”

“And the same to you!” Makoto replied, before heading off in the _right_ direction this time!

“H-hey! Naegi!” A few minutes later he was interrupted by Oowada yelling at him from behind… He was out of bed already?

“Hey, Oowa… _da!?_ ” Makoto stammered… he should _not_ have been out of bed; he could barely _stand!_ “Shouldn’t you be resting!?”

“ _Ngh!_ No! I’ve gotta find Taka!” Oowada grunted…

 _Really?_ He’d clambered out of bed in _that_ state to drag Ishimaru back in with him? It was bad enough that his reaction to finding out about the Tragedy, and that his gang were probably all dead, had been to beckon the dazed hall monitor over to him and then drag him down for a kiss, but chasing after him while he was trying to _work?_

“Is it really that important? He wanted to check on the air purifier in division 12…”

“Air purifier…? What the fuck does he want with an air purifier!?”

“I don’t know… I think he just wanted to check it didn’t get broken when they took it from the physics lab… I don’t think Jowd made many of them, so they’re pretty rare…” Makoto shrugged.

“Wait… did you say the _physics room!?_ ” Mondo exclaimed, “SHIT! Naegi, _please,_ get after him! He’s gonna do something _stupid_ if he gets there!”

“Uhh…. Why…?”

“I AIN’T GOT TIME TA EXPLAIN! JUST RUN!”

“O-okay!” Makoto panicked and ran after Ishimaru, he could always let him know that his boyfriend was almost killing himself looking for him… Now which way was division 12… it should be just about… _here!_

No… this was a dead-end… oops! It must have been a right at the last turning, not a left…

Okay, third times the charm! Division 12 should be... in the direction of that screaming Makoto could hear…

Makoto had a bad feeling about this…

Soon he was rounding the corner into Division 12’s hangar, the doors of which had been left unmanned, probably by people who’d gone further inside to deal with whatever everyone was screaming at… whatever Ishimaru had done…

Makoto gulped and ran through to see for himself… only to start screaming at the sight himself.

A pool of blood was flowing out from the wide hole carved sideways into in Ishimaru’s stomach, as he now lay leaning against, and handcuffed to, the air purifier Makoto had given him directions to… what the hell!? How could this have happened?

“W-who did this?” Makoto asked once he’d stopped screaming.

“He… he did!” Some poor guard stammered, “He came in and said he wanted to check the air purifier… and then he asked if he could borrow my handcuffs, chained himself to it, said to take him to Maizono’s corpse and… did _that._ ”

“He… he killed _himself?_ ” Was that what Oowada had meant by him doing something stupid? Oh gods… if only Makoto hadn’t have got lost! Would he have caught Ishimaru?

“…Aargh! You were too late then…” Oowada didn’t even sound surprised as he limped into the room, along with Kirigiri… “How long’s he been dead for?”

“Uhh… about five minutes.” The guard stammered.

“ _FUCK!_ He could be _anywhere_ by now then!” Oowada complained.

“Uhh… Oowada… he… he’s _there…”_ Makoto tried not to actually _look_ at poor Ishimaru.

“I don’t mean his corpse, I mean his _ghost!_ ” Oowada snapped.

“His… ghost?” Kirigiri commented.

“Yeah! His ghost!” Mondo snapped, as if it should be obvious. “What? Don’t you guys remember what happened after I died!? Or the last time _he_ died!?”

Cut total silence as everyone in the room looked at each other in the hope that someone _else_ understood what Oowada was going on about, or was willing to tell the crazy gang leader that he’d gone insane…

“Shit… you _don’t_ remember… because it’s _time travel_ …” Oowada seemed to understand _something…_ “But that means if he goes back and saves _Maizono_ then I won’t remember _this… or_ being _friends_ with him!” He almost pulled his own hair out once he’d decided _that…_ “Shit, shit, _shit! Why_ didn’t I just keep my fucking _mouth_ shut!” He turned to look at Ishimaru… “I… I just meant, y’know, in _hindsight_ it woulda been better if you’d started with her! I didn’t mean ya had ta come and _off_ yourself ta do it!” He stumbled towards Ishimaru’s corpse… “Shit… did ya even realise it’ll mean I forget the sauna?” He fell to his knees at Ishimaru’s feet, ignoring the blood that splashed onto his clothes as he did it… “What’ll you do if I…”

Oowada’s question suddenly ground to a halt as he froze, a vacant expression in his eyes… and he stayed like that for several minutes… Geez, what the heck had _happened_ to him!?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!  
> I've not really got much to say about this chapter, except that one of the things I liked about Ghost Trick was how blase some of the characters got about dying, once they knew they could be rescued.  
> (And yes, I realise there's a much more sensible option Ishi could have taken, but he's still not thinking straight)


	8. (Mondo POV)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a reminder that in Ghost Trick, people who were awake when they died and were rescued can then talk to the ghosts afterwards (but people who never woke up can't remember their time being dead, or talk to ghosts)

The _hell!?_ Why was he back in the ghost world? Did someone kill him!?

“Kyoudai?” Taka popped up… or at least the white haired version did… “CAN YA HEAR US?”

“Of course I can hear you! Ya don’t need ta shout so loud!” Mondo winced at his volume.

“Our bad! We weren’t sure ‘cause you’re not dead…” He shrugged, “But for some reason you’ve got a core now! Wonder if it’s ‘cause I saved you? I shoulda asked…”

Was he seriously going off into a lecture _now!?_ “WHO GIVES A FUCK! WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU _THINKING!?”_

“You… you said we shoulda saved…”

“I didn’t mean run off and _kill yourself!_ ” Mondo started, “What if it hadn’t worked!? What if it was something _else_ in that room that did it and all ya did was kill yourself for no reason? Hell, what if it _had_ worked and you’d saved Maizono and then come back here and I’d forgotten everything after that and we didn’t end up being friends again!?”

“Ah…” That last part hit him at least! “…Maybe it woulda been better…”

_WHAT!?_ WHAT THE _FUCK!?_ How could he SAY that!? They… they’d just _kissed_ earlier!

Mondo… he’d been thinking about it… Hell, he’d had… _thoughts_ about guys before coming to Hope’s peak… but he’d always told himself ta cut that gay shit out, ‘cause he had a _gang_ to lead and he was too strong to appeal to a guy anyway! Right!?

Well, that’d been _wrong_ apparently, cause Taka had gone nuts trying to rescue him and had then kissed him straight afterwards! And it had felt good enough that Mondo had forgotten all about what the _gang_ would think and would probably have pinned him to the bed and kissed back if he hadn’t just realised that they’d missed the opportunity to fix the mistake _he’d_ made… and the one _Leon_ had made as well!

But now he was saying he didn’t give a shit if Mondo was out of his life forever? Did Mondo not really mean anything to him? Then why the fuck had he kissed him!? Was it just ‘cause he’d wanted to kiss _someone_ and Mondo just happened to be _there?_ Did he only care about about Mondo because Mondo was the first person to want to be friends with him? Was he thinking that if he rescued Maizono, _she’d_ wanna kiss him? How could Mondo compete with _that!?_

“Hey… Kyoudai…!?” Taka put his hand on Mondo’s knee and stared at him, worried “W-what’s up with you!?”

…Shit… he must care about Mondo, at least a _bit,_ to stare at him like _that,_ right!? So why the fuck didn’t he mind the idea of Mondo forgetting him, just so he could go back and fix his fuck-up?

…Maybe that was it? Maybe Kiyotaka cared enough for him that he wanted him to be happy, to not live with Chihiro’s death on his conscience, even if it meant he had no memory of them being friends…

But there was no fucking _way_ Mondo was going to risk making a reality where he was too stupid to realise what a good friend Taka was to him!

“It wouldn’t be better if I forget ya, trust me!” Mondo told him. “I can live with knowing I caused Chi’s death… _especially_ if we fix it!”

“ _We?_ ” Taka asked, “Like… us and… _you?”_. He gestured to himself and Mondo.

“Yeah…” Mondo sighed. Looked like they were going to have to have that talk _again_ at some point.

“But you’re not…”

“So, I’ll become one! It worked for you, right?”

“Well… _yeah!_ Yeah, it did!” Taka agreed way more readily than Mondo thought he would… “Oh! But ya might wanna ask someone other than that guard ta help us get ta Maizono ‘cause he’s just been standing there freaking out instead of doing what I asked…” Mondo resisted face-palming and made a note to thank the guard for not helping Taka rush off by himself… “I’ll let ya go talk in the real world now…”

And then Taka and the ghost world disappeared and he could see Kirigiri waving a hand in front of his face…

It took him a while to explain what had happened, although it was helped by Kirigiri having found some notes from Hope’s Peak’s research staff that talked about Temsik and its effects. She was far more willing to help Mondo get some poison and drink it than he’d have expected any normal person to be… And she’d even suggested helping them out by taking Maizono’s corpse out of its freezer and putting it in Naegi’s bathroom so they’d start off right at the crime scene… They could _do_ this! And then he and Taka could talk about that kiss afterwards…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the short, non-event of a chapter! I felt like I needed to explore Mondo's POV at this point. Next chapter will be longer.


	9. (Missile POV)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a reminder that I messed up how the locations of ghosts after they save someone in Ghost Trick works, which is why Missile and Sissel are still stuck in the cold room, and aren't now in the trial room.  
> Also a reminder that Missile calls a telephone 'the hello' one time and it's cute AF.  
> Also a reminder that this is an AU where Junko isn't the mastermind/despair.

Where _where_ those guys? It’d been so long since they came back from the past! Had they forgot about him and Sissel?

“Do you think they’ll come soon?” Missle asked Sissel.

‘Hopefully…” Sissel meowed, his tail twitching irritably.

“…Do you think they forgot us?” Missile whined.

“No… I’m more worried something’s stopping them from getting to us…”

“Hhrrmmmm!” Missile whined for a moment, before hearing a noise and perking his ears up. “Oh! Someone’s coming!”

Sissel stopped lying around and crouched down by the door, ready to pounce out and escape if he got the chance… Whereas Missile got ready to sit by the door and bark ‘hello’ at them!

The door opened and Sissel managed to shoot past the legs of a purple girl and a boring boy carrying some handcuffs and a sword…

“Wait! Are you Sissel?” The boy shouted after him…

“Yes! And _I’m_ MISSILE!” Missile barked hello… but the boy ignored him!

“Sorry, Missile… Naegi’s never died before…” A voice came from the handcuffs…

“Huh? _Mondo!?_ ” Sissel stopped in his tracks and turned back to check the sword… “And _you to_ Kiyotaka!? What happened to you guys!?”

“We realised we shoulda saved Maizono!” The angry white boy who looked like Taka shouted.

“Uhh… Wait… so you guys _died on purpose!?_ ” Sissel yowled. “Are you _crazy!?_ You could have at least tried moving her body downstairs and letting us try by ourselves first!”

“Uhh… Well… _fudge…_ ” Angry Taka growled.

“If we’d done that we wouldn’t have remembered anything after though…” Mondo argued.

“Aww! You wanted to remember me!” Missile barked happily.

“…Haha! Yeah! ‘Course I did!” Mondo laughed back. “So once Naegi and Kirigiri move Maizono downstairs we can all go back together and fix things!”

“…You two are crazy…” Sissel sighed as he came over to the two little humans, picked up the book Missile was curled up in and followed them as they took the blue haired human down and put her in a _b-word_ room.

“Do you think this’ll actually _work,_ or are we just crazy?” The brown boy was asking.

“It’s an interesting question… after all, how would _we_ know? If it works, we won’t have any memory of having tried it…” The girl started talking on and on a lot…

“Hey! Maizono! You awake yet?” Mondo asked the blue haired lady’s soul…

“Doesn’t look like it.” Sissel miowed, “She’s a long sleeper…”

“Well… it probably doesn’t matter so long as we save her, right?” Mondo asked, “So let’s go! Back before Maizono died!”

“Alright! Hold onto your butts, mother-lovers!” Angry boy barked before all the usual spinny time stuff happened and they were back in the same room…

Except now the two alive humans were gone, and the blue haired lady was moving… she was looking at something and looking around like she was bored…

Then, they all heard a thud, and some rattling from the doorknob, which fell a bit before the door started opening…

The blue lady quickly threw her thing down a drain and pretended to sleep, before a big giant lady came through…

“ _Oogami!?”_ Mondo and angry boy both sounded surprised… “Not Kuwata?”

“Maybe he comes after her?”

“She said sweet fudge all about this in the trial though!” Angry boy growled as the giant picked up one of the pointy sticks Missile wasn’t allowed to play with from the floor.

“…We spoke to Kuwata, he kept saying over and over that it was a set up and he didn’t do anything…” Sissel told them, just before the giant lady pushed the stick into the blue haired lady and time ran out while the giant was using blue-lady’s finger to mark the wall with her blood…

“…So we picked the wrong person!?” Mondo cried.

“That lying mother-loving bear! He killed Kuwata for no fudging reason!” Angry boy barked.

“Well, lets stop it then!” Missile suggested.

“Hmm… assuming we can actually do anything to stop this…” Sissel sounded worried.

“Whaddaya mean?” Angry Taka growled, “Of course we can do something! Imma start by breaking that _knife!_ ”

… That didn’t work, the giant lady just used her hands instead, and cut blue lady with the pieces… Breaking the shower over her head didn’t do anything to her either, and Sissel couldn’t get them to work, and there was nothing for Missile to swap… and they couldn’t get out of the room…

“ _Your_ turn, Mondo!” Missile suggested.

“Me? I don’t even know what my trick is yet!” Mondo whined.

“We bet it’s something fudging awesome!” The white boy barked…

“Alright… I’ll give it a shot!” Mondo nodded and tried to posses the shower…

“Any idea what you can do?” Sissel asked.

“Uhh… yeah.” Mondo answered, pulling out the same thing angry Taka used for _his_ trick. “Don’t think it’ll help any though…” He tapped the shower head with it, and it broke off and hit blue-lady’s head…

“Oww!” She muttered, rubbing her head, then looked around meanly and went back to looking at her thing.

“ _Tch!_ It ain’t even as powerful as Taka’s version…” Mondo growled at the lack of mess he’d made…

“Yep! She’s still just looking at her grey boxy thing!” Missile commented.

“It’s called a _pager…_ She used it to send someone a message nine minutes before she died…” The white boy told him.

“Message? So it's like Miss Kamila's little hello?” Missile asked. “Why didn’t you go through it Sissel?”

 _“_ Uhh… because I never saw her send any message!” Sissel’s tail twitched irritably.

“Well, that’s ’cause we turned up _four_ minutes before she died!” Angry Taka shrugged.

“Whaddaya mean _four_ minutes!? Why didn’t ya get us back here _early_ like when ya rescued _me?”_ Mondo barked at him.

“How the _fudge_ should _we_ know! We just did it the same as before!”

“Are you sure? You must have done _something_ different!” Sissel pointed out.

“Oh, _gently caress you!_ We didn’t do anything different! Who’s to say that dumb mutt didn’t get the clock wrong?”

“I did _not_ get it wrong!” Missile barked, “And you _did_ do something different! You didn’t turn your fur white that time!”

“…Wait… That’s it!” Sissel purred, “You’re like two people, so you’ve got two tricks! So we just need the other Kiyotaka now!”

“What!? No! Ya don’t need _him!_ He’s _useless!”_

“Not right _now_ he isn’t! He’s the one who’ll give us a chance to change this girl’s fate!” Sissel told him.

“But… he can’t do _anything_ by himself!”

“Taka… why do ya keep _sayin’_ shit like that about yourself!?” Mondo growled. “Of _course_ ya can do shit alone!”

“But… _Mondo_ said…”

“Like _hell_ I said that! Will you quit this whole ‘I’m in your head’ shit already! I was _never_ there! Hell, how the _fuck_ can you even _think_ I wanna be in there saying _shit_ ta ya!” Mondo started barking super loudly. “I’m _not_ there, I don’t _wanna_ be there and I _never_ will be there, so quit _acting_ like I am!”

“You… you don’t want... us together?” Taka’s fur started turning black again, and the fire in his eyes was getting put out with tears.

“No, Taka. I want us to be me and _you_ … not _both_ of us.” Mondo sighed.

“I… I see…” Taka’s fur turned back to it’s normal black as he wiped away his tears.

“Great!” Sissel miowed, “Good to have you back, Kiyotaka!”

“…Is it?” Taka asked.

“Well, yeah! Of course it is!” Mondo grinned at him. “Now we can save Maizono like we should have before!”

“Ah… alright…” Taka nodded, slowly, before all the spinny stuff happened again…

This time when they got there, they could hear a boy’s voice through the door.

“Look… Maizono… I get it, this is all fucked up and you’re scared…” He was saying, “I’m worried as well! My video… it showed my cousin! And, like, I don’t want her to _die!_ But I was talking to Junko, and she said Kanon'd probably be pissed with me if I killed someone _else_ to save _her!_  And I realised she's  _right!!_ He carried on, while the blue lady seemed to be ignoring him to play with the boxy thing. “So… so I’m gonna act like this never happened, alright? I’m gonna get myself a snack from the shop, so, if ya wanna talk I’ll be there… okay? Maizono…?”

The blue lady didn’t talk back to him at all, and they all heard him sigh and leave.

“So… how does this help, exactly?” Mondo asked. “He wasn’t carrying anything, so we’re still stuck here!”

“Not _all_ of us! I can travel along with messages, so long as one is being sent out.” Sissel boasted. “Missile can’t, but you guys might be able to…”

“I think she’s about to send it, should we get ready?” Taka asked.

“Yes… get in the pager, and it’ll probably be obvious to you if you _can_ travel through it once she sends it.” Sissel ordered them… and a little bit later blue-hair lady tapped a button and Sissel and Mondo zipped away…

“Hellos don’t like you either?” Missile asked Taka, as he came back out of it.

“I don’t think _anything_ does…” He replied, sitting down on the knife on the floor.

“We do!” Missile barked, “You’ve got a good trick!”

“That just means you like my trick… not _me…”_

“Umm… but you’re a good boy and you do tricks when people ask, so that makes them like you!” Missile told him.

“…It doesn’t work like that for humans…” He sighed.

“So why’d you do them, then?”

“I don’t know… I just feel like I _have_ to do what’s right… Even if no one appreciates it...” He whined.

Missile whined to… he didn’t like seeing nice people sad, especially if he couldn’t help! But Taka didn’t want to try and pet him and didn’t even pay attention when Missile tried barking at him! All he was doing was just resetting time every time Sissel and Mondo failed and then looking at Mondo while the two of them discussed what to do next time… which they had to do lots and _lots_ of times!

“…This is fuckin’ impossible! How’re we supposed to keep her in the room when we only get about 3 minutes to barricade the door and she’s so strong!”

“I… don’t know, yet. But we have to keep trying…. Maybe if _this_ time I start by knocking over the wooden pole furthest from the door and…” Sissel was still miowing as they went through the little box…

“URRRGGHH!! This is really starting ta piss me off!” Mondo growled after Taka had to reset time _again_. “Can I just smash the whole fucking room up, just for the _sake_ of it!?”

“Well… it won’t do any harm to let off steam when Kiyotaka can just reset time again…” Sissel sighed, “But after that, _then_ we keep trying with the barricade…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soo... either the plot thickens or I've made this fic way more complicated than it needed to be! Wooooo... 
> 
> Also I was thinking of having Kirigiri launch into a discussion about what happens to people in the 'old' timelines after they get changed, and how, i.e. will they cease to exist or will it be the case that, from her and Makoto's point of view, even if Mondo and Taka do change the past, they're still going to be stuck in a timeline where they watched two of their friends commit suicide. moved them to a bathroom and then absolutely nothing happened. But this chapter was getting way too long already and that seemed like a huge downer so I decided to cut it.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	10. (Past Hina POV)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is probably going to be the shortest chapter of the fic.

_“Hina! Help me!”_

Oh no! She had to help Yuta! But she couldn’t _find_ him! Everything around her was banging and crashing and her arms and legs were pinned and the floor was shaking and she was falling sideways…

“Ah!” Hina woke up with a start, tangled in pink bedsheets on the floor, the bed she’d been sleeping on tilted down towards because the legs had broken… and the crashing noises from her dream were still happening, because the stacks of wooden planks Sakura trained with were all just breaking by themselves or falling off the shelves for no reason…

“Ah…” Hina shook as she pulled the sheets off of her, “Sakura…?” There was no response, had she gone _outside? “_ SAKURA!” Hina yelled, dodging the chaos around her to get to the door and run through it… “Sakura!” She yelled in relief as she saw her new friends walking up the corridor…

Sakura froze in place and turned to face her… “H-hina! Y-you’re awake?”

“Your room is going _crazy!”_ Hina told her, “Everything’s just breaking for no reason!”

“What do you mean…?” She asked, coming back to open the door and look into the room, just in time to she her bookcase suddenly tip sideways and deposit the last few planks left on it onto the floor. “…My ancestors are angry.” She decided.

“ _Huh?_ You’ve not done anything wrong!” Hina told her.

“…I was _about_ to.” She admitted. “I was about to follow orders from _Monokuma_ …”

Suddenly the room fell silent as everything in it stopped breaking… But Hina barely noticed as the world felt like it was dropping out from under her feet. “Wh-what!? _You_ … why would _you_ … _?_ ”

“He approached me after he showed us the videos, and said that he not only had Kenshiro, but also the rest of my Dojo… And that he would destroy it if I did not co-operate with him.” Sakura looked down at the floor, “That Dojo has been protected my my family for 400 years… I could not bear the thought of it being destroyed on my watch.”

“So… what did he want you to do?” Hina asked.

“I was given a pager and told to await instructions. A few minutes ago, I was sent a message telling me to kill Maizono and instructions for framing Kuwata as the blackened in my stead…”

“And… you were _going_ to?” Hina cried…  _Sakura_ would have _killed_ someone!? There was no _way!_ She… she probably would have changed her mind before she did it, right!?

“…Yes.” Sakura hung her head. “My dojo… my family… they’re important to me.” She sighed, “It never occurred to me that I may be bringing such shame upon them with my actions…” She looked at the mess in her room guiltily…

“Yeah… they sure got mad with _you!_ ” Hina laughed. “Maybe we should stay in _my_ room instead?”

“You… you would still stay with me?” Sakura’s face turned red and she looked shocked.

“Well, sure! You’ve got the _least_ reason to kill anyone now!” Hina told her, “And hey, maybe we should invite Maizono to, if Monokuma wants her dead!”

“Of course…” Sakura agreed, as they walked to Maizono’s room.

It was unlocked, so they went in, _this_ room was a mess as well! There were scratch marks all over the walls and bed and a sword on the floor… and something _else_ was off about it as well… why were _her_ bedsheets blue?

“This is Naegi’s room…They’ve switched for the night, apparently.” Sakura noted, heading over to the drawer and… pulling out a tool kit!? “My message said the door handle would need removing.” She added, she must have seen Hina’s expression…

“Oh! Gotcha!” Hina nodded and waited for Sakura to take off the handle. “But… how could you have framed Kuwata for that if you’re opening Naegi’s tool kit?”

“Monokuma gave me a location for a copy of Kuwata’s key. I was to swap their toolkits once I was done here.” She explained, as the last screw came off…

“Uhh… hello? Maizono?” Hina called in the bathroom as Sakura opened the door…

“Nrgh…” Maizono groaned, “Hina…?” She opened her eyes and sat up groggily, wincing as she moved her arm… which looked like it was starting to swell up.

“Oh gosh, what happened to you!?” Hina asked her, “And why are you in Naegi’s room? And is that a _knife?_ What’s going on!?”

“Umm…” She looked around the room guiltily, “I did something really stupid… But why did you _two_ come here!?”

“Well… it’s a long story… But it started with Sakura’s room getting trashed by ghosts…”

“ _GHOSTS!?”_ Maizono exclaimed.

“Yeah! Uhh… but don’t worry! They’re _good_ ghosts! You see…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!  
> Also I hope Sakura being superstitious about her family's views, and actually willing to go through with being the mole at this early stage of the game, doesn't seem too out of character for her.


	11. (Chihiro POV)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case it's not obvious, this chapter is taking place at the point when they go back to the original time point (What would have been just after Celestia's trial)

“Five… Six… Seven…” Chihiro grunted through the dumbbell set alongside Mondo. It was hard work, but he wanted to get stronger… everyone would need to be stronger now, in this post-Tragedy world. Especially as everyone here at Future Foundation seemed to think that the sixteen of them were somehow going to be the ‘lights of hope’ that rebuilt the world.

He didn’t really see what was so special about them all… they were just a group of kids who’d had their memories erased. They were lucky they hadn’t all ended up killing each other! It was only because Oogami had changed her mind about helping whoever was behind it that they hadn’t (And told them all hat there were were _ghosts_ in the school? Although Chihiro couldn't help but wonder if she'd had some sort of nervous breakdown and imagined it...). And then Monokuma had sulked, said something random about cheating and shut off an air purifier that was apparently the only thing keeping the air inside school breathable.

Then they’d been picked up by Future Foundation and had everything explained to them… their two years of missing memories, their friendships with each other, the events of the Tragedy… and the fact that, during those two years, Chihiro had admitted to them all that he was actually a boy.

He was lucky they were so understanding. He’d been expecting to get picked on, but instead everyone was supportive of him… particularly Mondo, who’d insisted that if he’d promised to help Chihiro get stronger, even if it was a forgotten promise, then he’d help Chihiro get stronger.

It was just a shame there was no evidence of a promise between him and Ishimaru. Apparently they’d been inseparable during those two missing years, but even after being shown photographs of them hugging they’d both refused to believe it and agreed to ignore each other in favour of trying to fix the world. Still, at least they weren’t arguing with each other anymore!

“Nine… Ten… Eleven… _Twelve!”_ Chihiro grinned as he completed the set and put the dumbbell down to rest.

Next to him, Mondo’s dumbbell fell to the floor with a almighty _thud…_

“Holy shit… Chihiro…?” Mondo whispered in awe.

“Umm… what? It was just a set of twelve reps…”     

“YOU’RE ALIVE!” He yelled, and suddenly Chihiro could barely breathe because he was trapped in the arms of six foot of muscles and _sweat!_ “OH THANK _FUCK!_ IT WORKED! Chihiro, I’m _so_ fucking sorry I…”

Why _wouldn’t_ he be alive?

“What are you _talking_ about, it was _one set!”_ Chihiro scowled. “We’ve still got another two to do and then…”

“You… don’t you remember?” Mondo let him go in order to stare at him. “ _Urg…_ no of course you fucking don’t! It’s _time travel!”_

“Time travel?” Was he being serious? “There’s no such thing as time travel…”

“Okay, look. I _know_ it sounds fucking insane! But… there was a version of the killing game where Sakura killed Maizono… and then… and then…” He trailed off.

“Umm… If you’re going to make jokes, you could at least _finish_ …”

“It’s not a fucking joke!” Mondo yelled, “ _I_ killed _you!”_

“ _Pfft!_ Ahaha!” Chihiro couldn’t help but laugh, “You’re saying _you,_ the guy who likes cotton candy and fluffy dogs, _killed ME!?”_

“I… I didn’t _mean_ to!” He cried, “It was just… that fuckin’ bear said he was gonna tell everyone in the world our secrets, like you actually being a boy, and me killing my brother…”

“Umm… you killed your _brother!?”_ This _had_ to be a joke. There was no _way_ Mondo would have done that!

“I… yeah…” He said, quietly, to the floor. “I didn’t mean to, but… I did.”

“…How?”

Mondo explained. Chihiro had never realised how insecure the biker really was. He knew Mondo respected his older brother, but he hadn’t realised Mondo’s gang respected _him_ more than Mondo… or that Mondo had always been seen as just being ‘Daiya’s kid brother’ and not a worthy leader, even _with_ Daiya’s blessing.

“…So right before I was supposed to take over, I challenged him to a race. He picked the route, it was supposed to be quiet roads, but there was a barrier down he hadn’t known about, and I didn’t wanna stop and look like I couldn’t make a spilt-decision, so I changed direction to a busier road that woulda ended in the same place.” Mondo admitted. “But I was so desperate to beat him… I kept going too fast, even on the busy roads, and suddenly I’m heading straight for a truck and there’s no time to get outta the way… and that’s when Daiya rams me off to the side and gets hit instead…”

“Well… that’s… that _horrible!_ But it was a mistake, right? Why did you keep it secret?” Chihiro asked.

“’Cause I promised him I’d keep the gang together!” He explained, “And they’d never have followed me if they knew I’d fucked up, so I told ‘em all _he’d_ been the one being stupid!”

“So… in this other… version of the killing game, you killed me rather than let that get out?” Chihiro gulped.

“I… sorta. You asked to train with me, and then you told me your secret, and suggested we all tell each other our secrets and… I got scared… and pissed off that you were fuckin’ braver than me and… I snapped.” He recounted, “I’m sorry.”

Well… that was scary. Was that the sort of thing Monokuma _could_ have made them do? Assuming this was actually true and not Mondo having a breakdown…

“Umm… so how did you bring me back to life…?”

“Uhh… right… lemme see if I can explain this…”

 _What was he going on about?_ Time travelling ghosts? Ishimaru saving Mondo then killing himself again to save Maizono instead?  Travelling through a text message Maizono sent Oogami, but then the message Oogami received was from Monokuma? _And_ telling Oogami to kill _Maizono?_

“Umm… that doesn’t make any sense.” Chihiro pointed out, “Why would Maizono send a message telling Oogami to kill her?”

“Uhh…” Mondo froze, “I… yeah, I dunno…”

“Are you sure this all really happened?” Chihiro asked him, “I mean, it’s been a pretty stressful week…”

“Yeah! I’m sure it happened!” Mondo cried.

“Well…maybe you should talk to Gekkogahara…” Chihiro suggested, “The therapist?”

“No! Look, Chihiro, I ain’t fuckin’ crazy! I swear!” Mondo insisted, “Look… I’ll go get Taka… or I’ll ask Maizono what the hell she was thinking! So wait here!” He stormed out of the room.

Oh boy… this didn’t seem good. To think someone as strong as _Mondo_ had lost it? Should he go after him? Mondo had told him to wait here though… and he still had exercises to do. Maybe he should finish the program and _then_ if Mondo wasn’t back, he’d go looking for him…

“Seven… Eight… Nine… Umm… Justamoment!” Chihiro apologised as he heard the door opening during his third set… “ _Ten… Elev…_ ”

He was interrupted a second time, this time by a gunshot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading... (and I'm so sorry, I back and forthed over whether to actually show this part so much.)


	12. (Present Makoto Ver. 2 POV)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I suddenly remembered I forgot to post this yesterday! Whoops!  
> Also, apologies if it seems a bit repetitive from last chapter. I almost didn't include Chihiro's bit in the story, so Its ended up having parts repeated here.

Makoto jumped slightly at the sound of a knock on the door to the room Future Foundation had given him… It was a pretty basic room, but at least it wasn’t all scratched up like his one in the school ended up…

To think both Maizono _and_ Sakura came close to killing someone a few days ago! Good thing those ghosts had turned up in Sakura’s room and made her change her mind! Although it’d be nice to know how the _heck_ that had happened… Maybe this was Kirigiri with that info she said she thought might have something to do with it. She was still worried that Monokuma, and whoever was controlling him, had given up _way_ too easily after Sakura admitted what she’d almost done and why she hadn’t…

Makoto brushed off his hoodie and fixed his hair a little before opening the door… only to find himself facing Ishimaru, who was looking _very_ downcast and slightly embarrassed to be there.

“Ah… I realise this is odd…” He started, “But I don’t where Mondo’s room is.”

 _‘Mondo’?_ Why was he suddenly calling Oowada by his first name? They’d done nothing but glare and snap at each other since they’d all met… they hadn’t even seemed willing to believe the fact that they’d been nearly inseparable before everyone’s memories were taken before now!

“That’s not _that_ odd… But I can take you there now!” Makoto offered.

“Ah, Thank you.” Ishimaru said dully, as they slowly started walking towards Oowada’s room… Man, finding out about the Tragedy had really taken the spring out of Ishimaru’s step.

“Hey… look. I know it seems bad _now…_ But we’ll find a way to fix all this!” Makoto tried to cheer him up.

“Fix all of… _what?”_ He asked.

“Uhh… y’know, the _world?”_ Ishimaru still looked confused, “Y’know…. The Tragedy?”

“Which tragedy?” He asked.

“You… do you not remember what we got told when Future Foundation picked us up!?” How had he lost his memories _again!?_ Oh, gods, what if it was a side effect of whatever Ultimate Despair had used on them and was going to happen to _all_ of them?

“Err…” He looked apprehensive. “This is going to sound unbelievable, but…”

“Look, I’m _telling_ you, I know what she did ‘cause I was a _ghost!_ ” He was interrupted by Oowada shouting from the next corridor.

“What!? Are you trying to claim _you_ were the one who stopped Sakura!?” Kuwata was laughing in response. “Buddy, that would have been a dumb way to chat her up, even if you’d _not_ waited a week to come up with it!”

“I didn’t _wait_ a week! I only just _got_ here!” Oowada snapped back at him.

“…But you’ve been here the whole time…” Sayaka pointed out.

“I… that’s ‘cause… okay, I don’t actually get it, just ask Taka! He was the one who actually _listened_ to the explanation, I was just playing with a dog!”

“’ _Taka’!?_ ” Kuwata exclaimed.

“…Is that Ishimaru?” Sayaka asked.

“Uhh… yeah, it’s his nickname! See, in the reality where you both died, me and him…”

“In other words, you guys have decided to see if you could actually be friends like everyone keeps saying you _should be_ and _he’s_ suggested this fuckin’ stupid way possible for you to chat Maizono up!” Kuwata sighed loudly. “Seriously man, she’s with _me,_ and even if she _wasn’t_ she wouldn’t be falling for this stupid attempt to get in her pants!”

“That’s not what I’m…!”

“Save it, Oowada! We’re _leaving!_ ” Kuwata snapped…

“ _FUCK!”_ Oowada cursed to himself, while Makoto looked over at Ishimaru, who looked even _more_ despondent…

“Umm… what parts of that were true?” Makoto asked him, “…Is Oowada telling the truth? You really _were_ ghosts? Is that why you don’t remember about the Tragedy?”

Ishimaru nodded, but didn’t look like he wanted to say anything else about it… Maybe he’d have better luck with Oowada… He grabbed hold of Ishimaru’s hand to chivvy him along and hurried to the next corridor, where Oowada was stomping up and down anxiously…

“Hey! Oowada!” Makoto shouted to him, and he turned to face them, giving a sigh of relief as he locked eyes on Ishimaru.

“Kyoudai!” Oowada rushed over to give his, apparently now, friend a tight hug, something that Ishimaru looked surprised to receive. “Look, we’ve got a problem… at least I think we do? Maybe?” Oowada glanced at Makoto, “Might be easier to tell you in private though…”

“If it’s about you two being ghosts, Ishimaru told me you were, already…” Makoto told him, “Although I still don’t understand exactly what happened?”

Oowada looked at Ishimaru, as if hoping _he’d_ be the one to explain it, but Ishimaru just looked away from him, leaving Oowada to explain it himself.

“Uhh… well… Lemme start from the top…”

…This _still_ hardly made any sense. No wondered he’d wanted Ishimaru to explain it!

The best Makoto could figure out was that Ishimaru had got powers from dying near the air purifier, then instantly gone back in time to save Mondo, because apparently in _that_ timeline they’d become best buddies after Sayaka died and he’d then had a breakdown when Mondo died. Then they’d skipped back to the time they came from, which was when Mondo had realised it would have made more sense to save Sayaka, and when he’d said as much to Ishimaru, the hall monitor had run off to the air purifier and stabbed himself again. Then Mondo had followed suit and _he_ and Kirigiri had help him and some other ghosts trapped in the cold room to get Sayaka’s corpse down to the shower room, which was how they’d been able to get to Sakura’s room and smash it up that night…

This was all interspersed with talk of Ishimaru and Oowada being the same person, Oowada being ‘a fucking idiot’, there being a really cute dog in the cold room and Oowada getting worried about why Ishimaru wasn't talking...

“Does that makes sense?” Oowada asked.

“Uhh… mostly?” Makoto shrugged, “But… you mentioned there being a problem…?”

“Shit! Yeah! Y’see…”

“ _Hey! There_ you guys are!” Oowada was cut off by Hagakure excitedly running over to them. “Is it true you two are time-travelling ghosts!?”

“Well… we _were_ time travelling ghosts…” Oowada told them, “But now we saved Maizono we’re alive again.”

“Oh, really? Oh man, that’s a bummer…” Hagakure sighed, “I was thinking you could have stopped the council massacre…”

“The _what now?”_ Oowada asked him.

“Oh right… you guys skipped the explanation…” Makoto realised, before launching into an explanation of the events that had led to the fall of both Hope’s Peak and the rest of the world…

“So… if we’d stopped the council dying, we’d have never been trapped in the first place?” Oowada asked.

“Yeah… and one of their bodies is here, which was why I was thinking you could stop it…” Hagakure sighed,

“Well… we still can!” Ishimaru told him. “I just need to go to the air purifier and…”

“No! No we fuckin’ _don’t!”_ Oowada snapped at him. “We need ta go back to the _cold room_ and get _Sissel_ to deal with it!”

“He should actually be in the shower room, if I understand things correctly…” Ishimaru corrected him.

“Well, _wherever_ he is we go _there_ and get _him_ to deal with it!”

“Uhh… is Sissel the cat?” Hagakure asked.

“Yes! How do you…?” Ishimaru started asking.

“I, uhh… I had a prediction there'd be something back in the school that could help fix all this!” Hagakure explained, “So I took him to the council member, but then he just wrote a note about not having enough time and needing you guys…”

“So… I _do_ need to go to the air purifier again…” Ishimaru nodded determinedly.

“ _Do_ you?” Oowada asked him, “I mean… yeah, it’s bad what happened, but why _should_ you risk _your_ life and memories and shit to fix it all!”

“Because _someone_ has to! And I fit the requirements…” Ishimaru said calmly. “I’ve been given a chance to save _millions_ of people, how could I _not_ take it?”

“That’s our class rep!” Hagakure slapped him on the back.

“Alright, _fine!”_ Oowada relented, “But can we find a better way to do it than slicing your stomach open?”

“Would a gun help?” Hagakure reached into his pocket and _ohgoodgriefwhogaveHAGAKUREaGUN!?_

“Perfect!” Ishimaru nodded… geez, how could he just walk into his own death like this? He barely faltered as they all made their way to the surprisingly quiet division 12 hangar and he sat down with his back against the air purifier… He only looked upset when Oowada joined him.

“Ah… _you_ don’t need to…” Ishimaru started.

“ _Excuse me!?_ You think I’m just gonna let you go alone!?” Oowada snapped back at him. “And end up in a world where _you’re_ the only one who remembers everything that happened to us!?”

“Why would it matter if I did?” Ishimaru asked him.

“You… you seriously don’t…” Oowada just stammered, and his face looked as pained as if he’d just been kicked in the stomach. “You wouldn’t care if I didn’t remember everything we’ve been through?”

“Err… It’s not that I wouldn’t _care…_ but it doesn’t seem worth you risking your life if we’re not able to…”

“Well it fucking _is_ worth it, okay!” Oowada shouted. “I’m coming with ya, end of.” He turned away from Ishimaru, probably to hide how red his face was turning…

On the other hand, Ishimaru just looked completely baffled for a few moments, before hesitantly muttering a “Very well…”.

“So, you two ready?” Hagakure asked, waving the gun cheerfully. “Hey, what about you, Naegi? You want in on this?”

“ _Hell no!”_ Makoto cried. “You guys are _crazy!_ ”

“Well, don’t say I didn’t give you the chance!” Hagakure laughed. “Ok, so I’ve got these slips of paper, with me. Once you’re dead, jump into them… I’ll give you 5 minutes, alright?”

They _were_ crazy, right? How could they all just cheerfully be discussing what they’d do after they were _dead!?_ Surely one of them would have cold feet in a moment and they’ve give this up, right? Makoto’s money was on Hagakure…

…

“I still can’t believe you _did_ that!” Makoto commented, at they were heading to the dead council member afterwards. He _really_ hadn’t thought Hagakure would be the sort to point blank shoot two guys in the head, even if they _were_ asking him to so they could go back in time and stop the Tragedy…

“Yeah, I know, it’s probably _tons_ of bad karma… but I’ve not really got a choice…” Hagakure sighed, guiltily, as he fiddled with the gun. “If I don’t follow orders _I’ll_ be the dead one.”

“Uhh… what’re you talking about?” Makoto asked, turning to look at Hagakure just as he brought the gun up to Makoto’s face.

The last thing Makoto heard was Hagakure sadly saying “Sorry, dude.” before the gun fired…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I continue to be sorry.


	13. (Mondo POV)

“HAGAKURE YOU BASTARD! WHAT THE HELL DID YA DO THAT FOR!?” Mondo roared as Naegi’s corpse hit the floor…

“Aww, man… d’ya _have_ to yell at me like that?” Hagakure replied, like it wasn’t his own fuckin’ fault Mondo was yelling at him! “It’s not like I _wanted_ to do it! I’m just lucky I didn’t have to kill Chihiro and those guards as well!” He added, wiping the gun off and curling Naegi’s dead fingers around it…

“Chi!? CHI’S DEAD AS WELL!” Mondo yelled. He’d gone to all trouble to rescue him and then this dumbass _bastard_ had just killed him again right after he left him alone!?

“Urg… yeah… Sorry, man.”

“ _WHO THE FUCK DID THAT!?_ AND WHY THE _FUCK_ ARE YOU HELPING THEM!?”

“I made a deal, man… I came back to life, but I have to do everything she said to, or I’ll be a dead man… again!”

The fuck was he on about?

“…Is that how you can hear us?” Taka asked him. “You’ve been saved by a ghost before!”

“Uhh… I’ve probably said too much…” Hagakure cringed, “She told me to keep my trap shut about it…”

Well he’d done a crap job of _that,_ given he’d spilled the fact that it was a chick… but which chick? Maizono? Was _that_ why she’d sent a message telling Oogami to kill her? Because she was already dead? But then how’d they gone back in time to rescue her _then_ if she was already dead beforehand?

“So now what are ya doing with us?” Mondo asked.

“I’ve gotta trap you back in the school, so you don’t cause trouble…” Hagakure sighed.

“That’s it? If ya wanted us out of the picture, why not just off us _away_ from the magic rock?”

“I did a prediction on that… it wasn’t gonna go well.” Hagakure shrugged. “Easier to convince you two sit still for me…”

“Well… shit.” Mondo muttered, they’d fallen right into this like a pair of idiots, hadn’t they? “Uhh… any thoughts, Taka?”

“…I shouldn’t have let you do this with me…” He sighed, “I knew it was a bad idea…”

 _What the hell!?_ How could he keep _saying_ that!? It was like he was hoping Mondo’s memories would be erased and he’d forget everything about, well, _them?_ And why was he being so goddamn quiet and moody about everything? Ever since he’d gone back to normal this last time he’d hardly talked! But he’d been fine just after he’d rescued _Mondo!_ So what had changed!?

Had Mondo _done_ something? Had he managed to fuck things up with Kiyotaka so badly he didn’t even want Mondo as a _friend,_ let alone a boyfriend or whatever he’d been thinking they’d be when he kissed him, and that was why he kept saying he didn’t want Mondo to follow him into the past each time? But Taka hadn’t _said_ anything, so how the hell was Mondo supposed to know what he’d done or how to fix it!? Hell, he hadn’t even mentioned the kiss since it’d happened! Did he even remember _doing_ it?

Shit… with his personality all over the place like it had been, maybe he _didn’t…_ But then that didn’t explain why he was being so _quiet…_

Seriously, why couldn’t Taka just _tell_ him what the problem was?

“Well, here you are guys. Your new home!” Hagakure slipped the pieces of paper he and Taka were in under the door of the cold room… Damn it! There hadn’t been anything nearby that they could have used to escape over the whole route!

“Goddammit!” Mondo swore at it all…

“Mondo?” Sissel wandered over to sniff at his piece of paper… “And Kiyotaka? You two died _again!?”_

“They’re worse than Miss Lynne!” Missile piped up.

“Okay, this time it wasn’t our fault!” Mondo told them… “Well, it kinda was… but we were trying to stop the school getting destroyed a year ago!”

“ _Huh!?_ The school got destroyed!? But that’s where _Miss Kamilla_ was!” Missile whined.

“Uhh… really? I’m sorry…” Mondo didn’t know what to tell him… Or who this Miss Kamila he was so upset about actually _was…_ man he _really_ should have been listening before…

“ _How did it happen!?”_ Sissel asked, sounding as upset as the dog.

…What had Naegi actually told them? “Uhh… well, it started with the student council getting killed a year ago, which was what Hagakure said he wanted us to go back and fix…

“…That wouldn’t even have been possible…” Sissel stated.

“Whaddaya mean?”

“There’s a time limit on how far back so can go to rescue a person. Beyond a week it’s impossible.”

“Are you serious!? So he even tricked us with an excuse that wasn’t even possible in the first place!?”

“… _Who_ tricked you?” Sissel asked, “You mean that man with the large brown hair?”

“Yeah, he’s called Hagakure… how’d _you_ know him?” Mondo asked.

“He’s the one who trapped us in here.” Sissel answered, “ _Twice_ now…” He added with a hiss.

“ _WHAT!?_ Why didn’t ya warn us about him then!?”

“I didn’t know you knew him…” Sissel admitted.

“He was back in the trial room when you were rescuing me!” Mondo snapped.

“With all the mess Kiyotaka was making in there, I could barely see _you,_ let alone your classmates!” Sissel admitted. “Although, speaking of which, maybe those two have just made a big mistake…”

“Wait… Those _two?_ ” Mondo asked. “You know someone _else_ involved in this?”

“Yes… there’s him and one other man who came to bring the corpses…” Sissel said, “He wore a suit, and he has dark hair…”

A suit and _dark_ hair? Mondo didn’t know anyone like that… But that probably didn’t matter right now. “What’s this mistake they’ve made?”

“They’ve put you in here to trap you… but they’ve not done anything to stop you using your _tricks_ to _break_ us out of here!” He said, sounding overjoyed.

“ _HAH!_ You’re _right!_ ” Mondo grinned, making his pickaxe appear from out of nowhere like he had before. “I’ll have us smashed outta this room in _no_ time!” He slammed the pickaxe into the floor, just like he’d watched Taka do last time…

Huh… no effect. Then again, it had taken Taka a few tries, hadn’t it? He just had to keep at it!

About 5 minutes later, the floor was still unmarked…

“You’re not as good a digger as the white fur Taka…” Missile commented, sadly.

“Dammit…” Mondo muttered. This meant they were going to have to ask Taka to start acting like an asshole again, wasn’t it?

“Hey… Taka. You mind helping out?” Mondo asked him.

“…What do you mean?” He asked.

“Well… you smashed through the floor _last_ time…”

“But… That wasn’t me!” Taka stammered, “I mean… _I_ don’t have any trick but time travel!”

“Which is why we need the white-haired you.” Sissel told him. “Can you change back to him for a moment?”

Taka just stared at the three of them for a long moment.

“…No. I can’t.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for continuing to read!


	14. (Kiyo POV)

_They were all staring at him… He’d let them all down…_

They were all expecting him to perform just the right trick to get them out of this… And why shouldn’t he? He’d done it before, right? When he’d had Mondo’s voice in his head cheering him on, and even when it’d been insisting he was useless without it, at least it had been there, _with him…_

But _now?_

_(“I was never there!”)_

“…Can you _try?”_ Missile was asking him innocently, “Try barking like him?”

Try… _acting_ like Mondo? By himself? Well… he _had_ to try, else they’d all be stuck in this room forever! But what would be the sort of thing Mondo would say…?

“I…” Three pairs of eyes lit up as he croaked out something vaguely resembling Mondo’s voice…

(“ _I’m NOT there, I don’t WANNA be there and I NEVER will be there, so quit ACTING like I am!”)_

“I… I _can’t_ …” His attempt died in his throat…

“Perhaps try _imaging_ you’re him?” Sissel suggested desperately.

_(“How the fuck can you even THINK I wanna be in there saying shit ta ya!?”)_

“…I can’t.” He couldn’t even look them in the eyes anymore… He’d never not been able to do what people asked of him… not when it was _this_ important!

“Well… why the fuck _not!?”_ Mondo snapped at him…

_(“I want us to be me and you… not both of us.”)_

“Because _you_ told me _not_ to!”

“Well, I don’t mean act like me _forever!”_ Mondo cried in exasperation, “Just for long enough ta get us _out_ of here!”

“I _can’t!_ It’s not just something I can switch on and off whenever I want to!” Ishimaru tried to explain…

“Well, ya seemed ta be switching easily enough before!” Mondo countered.

“That was because I thought that was what you _wanted!”_ He cried.

“Well, right now, I _want_ you ta switch again so we’re not all stuck together in this shitty room forever!” Mondo snapped.

“Well, how do you expect me to delude myself into believing our souls are combined when you make it so _painfully_ obvious you want nothing to do with me!” Ishimaru snapped back on instinct.

“The _fuck? You’re_ the one who keeps wanting to go off and _die by himself_ so you can make me forget I ever even _liked_ ya!” Mondo yelled.

 “I… I’d have made friends with you again!” Ishimaru assured him, _“_ And _that_ way you wouldn’t remember that I… made the wrong decision regarding who to be a hero to!”

“What the fuck are you talking about?" Mondo growled. "Do you mean the _kiss!?_ ” 

Did he have to make it so embarrassingly clear to everyone what he'd done? “… _Yes._ I meant the kiss…” Kiyotaka admitted.

“So that meant nothing to you then?” Mondo snarled, “It was just a fuckin’ _mistake_ to you…!? _”_

Why was Mondo so angry about it? It wasn’t _his_ fault he’d misread Mondo’s feelings! “In my defence, you _said_ I could do anything I wanted!”

“Well, I didn’t think you’d _wanna_ fuckin’ gimme my fucking _first kiss_ and then drop me like a goddamn _rock two_  minutes later!” Mondo snapped.

“What are you talking about!? _You’re_ the one who interrupted it to say I should have rescued a _girl_ instead of _you!”_ Ishimaru reminded him.

“Ggh! Wait… _What!?_ ” Whatever angry retort Mondo had planned caught in his throat…

“And furthermore _, you_ were the one who then proceed to attempt to chat up _that_ girl once we’d rescued her!” He continued.

“…You fucking _dumbass!”_ Mondo slapped his own forehead…

“ _Excuse me!?”_

“I don’t give a _shit_ about Maizono!” He yelled, “I only said ya should have rescued her in the first place so Leon and Enoshima would be alive it’d _fix_ the fact that I _murdered_ _Chihiro!”_

“ _Oh_ …” In retrospect it _did_ make the most sense to rescue the earliest death and stop the resulting chain of them… “But… what about your discussion with her and…?”

“That’s ‘cause I wanted ta know why she’d sent Oogami a message sayin’ ta kill herself.” Mondo scowled.

“ _What!?”_ Ishimaru exclaimed, “Why do you think she…”

“We heard the giant woman tell her friend what the message said.” Sissel piped up. “Apparently it was instructions to kill her and make it look like the red haired fellow did it.”

“So… D’ya get it now?” Mondo asked, “I… I didn’t mean ta reject ya…”

“But then, in the bathroom… you said that you wouldn’t want to be with me… and how could I possibly think you’d want to speak to me…”

“I… I just meant I didn’t want ya ta keep saying horrible shit about yourself and acting like _I’d_ said it to ya!” Mondo cried, “’Cause I _like_ ya and I’d never say any of that shit about you…”

“Oh…” Ishimaru blinked… Mondo _liked_ him? “So… you’re not opposed to us being… _together?”_ He asked, cautiously daring to hope Mondo wasn’t about to rip his heart out…

“D’ya mean… _kissin’_ again?” Mondo blushed and shuffled his feet… “I don’t mind that… I mean… I dunno if I want the gang finding out but…”

“Well… I’m hardly going to want to engage in PDA myself!” Ishimaru snapped, feeling slightly scandalised. “But… perhaps the next time we’re in private? And alive?”

“Uhh… sounds good!” Mondo nodded sharply.

“Very well then!” Ishimaru laughed, happily…

“…So can you do the smashy, diggy thing now?” Missile asked them.

“Errgh…” The reality of their current situation hit Ishimaru like a ton of bricks… they still needed him to become ‘Ishida’ and, although he now had Mondo’s blessing, he still had absolutely no clue _how_ anymore!

“Hey… how about this?” Mondo suggested, summoning his _own_ pickaxe… “Why don’t we use _my_ power… but _together?”_ He held out the handle for Ishimaru to hold along with him…

He cautiously grabbed the handle of the pickaxe, feeling something akin to a mild surge of electricity coursing from it into his arms as he did so… Although whether that was something from the pickaxe itself, or just excitement from the way Mondo then wrapped his own arms around Ishimaru’s body to hold it and help him swing it against the door, he couldn’t tell…

Either way, the door crumpled and swung outwards as the pickaxe hit it…

“ _Finally!”_ Sissel purred and stretched, before picking up the pieces of paper he, Mondo and Missile were possessing in his mouth and darting out of the wrecked door…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hooray the angst is finally over! Sorry it went on for so long! And thanks for continuing to read!  
> Bit of bonus dialogue for you all. I was originally thinking Missile and Sissel would be commenting on the argument in the background, but it got to confusing to actually put it in between Mondo and Taka's dialogues, so here it is:  
> “Sissel? Why are they barking so loudly at each other?”  
> “…I think it’s a mating thing…”  
> “…Do they know they’re both boy humans? They can’t have puppies…”  
> “Eh… they’ll probably pick up some stray kittens or something…”


	15. (Sissel POV)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updating a day later than usual, sorry! I was visiting family and feeling too ill to update last night.  
> Also apoligies for a lot of exposition in this chapter.

Finally, _finally,_ they were _out_ of that _room!_ But _now_ what? All he could do was explore the hallways and rooms to see if he could find anything of use…

“MISS KAMILLA!?” Missile barked loudly, “ARE YOU HERE!?”

Sissel didn’t have the heart to point out that she wouldn’t have heard Missile even if she _was…_ Or that it was painfully apparent that she _wasn’t_ …

“You kids weren’t joking about the school being deserted, were you?” Sissel commented.

“I’m afraid not…” Kiyotaka replied. “Although I only saw the first three floors of the building. It’s possible that there’s somebody up _here…”_

But a quick check over the floor they were on showed it was as deserted as the rest…

“So that just leaves the fourth floor…” Kiyotaka suggested. Sissel guessed there must have been a sign saying that this top floor was the fifth one as he carried them all down the stairs, to the fourth floor, which was just as devoid of the living as the rest of them.

But not completely devoid of people, as they discovered when breaking down the door to a room that Kiyotaka called ‘the data centre’, a room filled with television screens and a door with a picture of a weird looking teddy bear…

“Look at all the shiny boxes!” Missile yapped.

“Security screens… this must be where whoever caused all this was monitoring everything!” Kiyotaka announced. “We should search this room thoroughly! Perhaps there’s a clue as to their identity!”

“Urg… Do we have to do it with that creepy picture of Monokuma starin’ at us?” Mondo complained.

“You mean the door? You’re going to have to smash it open anyway…” Sissel would have shrugged if he’d been human.

“ _Hell yeah!_ Imma enjoy this!” Mondo grinned. As if he hadn’t been enjoying all the _other_ times he’d ‘had’ to hug Kiyotaka to get that trick of his to work better…

Behind _that_ door was a small room, with one larger screen set above some buttons… but what Sissel’s attention was drawn to was the small trapdoor in the floor just inches away from him. He idly tricked it open…

And then jumped two foot in the air at the sight of _him,_ the man who’d been bringing corpses into the freezer room, slouched down in a space barely big enough to hold him.

“ _YOU!”_ Sissel hissed, back arched in preparation for when he’d move and try to catch them…

Except he didn’t… There wasn’t even the sound of movement… or _breathing._

“You know who he is?” Mondo asked.

“Or… _was?_ ” Kiyotaka whispered, so he’d noticed it as well…

“He’s the man who brought bodies up to that freezy room!” Missile barked, sounding panicked, “Sissel, why aren’t you _running!?”_

“…He’s dead.” Sissel explained, and cautiously moved closer to get a closer look… “For over a week.” He added.

“How can you tell?” Kiyotaka asked, grimly. “Is it… the _smell_ or…?”

“No, thankfully having a Temsik shard _in_ me means I can’t smell…” Sissel explained, “I can tell because he’s not got a core anymore…”

“I see. Wait… hold on… I think I…” Kiyotaka seemed to realise something… but was cut off by his mate cursing loudly…

“ARGH! _FOR FUCKS SAKE!_ I thought I was _finally_ understanding all this time-travel bullshit!”

“Ahh… well, what is it you don’t understand?” Kiyotaka asked him, “Maybe we can help explain it!”

“Well… I _though_ how it works is that every time we save someone we end up coming back to the same point in time we started at before going backwards to save someone!”

“That… _is_ how it works…” Kiyotaka told him.

“Oh… uhh… but I also thought, to be able ta rescue Maizono, it had ta be _less_ than a week since she died and her body got moved?”

“Yes, that’s right as well.”

“So… how the _fuck_ can the guy who woulda moved her body if we hadn’t saved her have been dead longer than _her?”_

“Err…” That… was a good question…

“Maybe he’s like Yomiel?” Missile suggested. “ _He_ could move his body about!”

“That’s probably it…” Sissel agreed.

“Who the fuck is _Yomi…?”_

“So you’re saying the headmaster’s corpse was being ‘tricked’ into moving by a _ghost?_ ” This time Mondo was the one being cut off by Kiyotaka.

“The… headmaster?” Sissel asked.

“Err… Yes! _This_ man… he was Hope’s Peak’s headmaster, Jin Kirigiri.” Kiyotaka explained, “I’m almost certain of it.”

“But wasn’t he supposed to be looking after Miss Kamila?” Missile whined, “Who’s looking after Miss Kamila!? Where _is_ she!?”

“Miss _who…?”_ Mondo asked… Urg, he didn’t even know _that?_ Sissel _knew_ he’d been too busy playing with Missile to pay attention when he was trying to explain everything!

“Errrr… I realise _I’m_ probably most of the reason we _haven’t_ done this already…” Kiyotaka cringed slightly, “But… I think it would probably be wise for us all to pool our information together and figure out everything that happened to Hope’s Peak!”

“ _Can_ we? ‘Cause I don’t have the first clue what the gently caress is going on anymore!” Mondo agreed.

Now if only Kiyotaka had thought of that _before_ these two stupidly sacrificed themselves… “Sounds good to me…How’s about I start explaining what _I_ know and you interrupt if you have anything relevant to add…” They both nodded at the suggestion, “Alright. Missile and I came to Hope’s Peak about… four years ago now.”

“With Miss Kamila!” Missile interrupted.

“Yes, with Mi… with Kamila Jowd, our owner, who was admitted here as the Ultimate Physicist because… well, _publicly_ because of her work with air filtration, but the _school_ was more interested in the secret research she was carrying out on Temsik’s radiation.”

“She came four years ago? So she was two years ahead of us…” Kiyotaka mused.

“I thought you said you guys were only just starting?”

“Uhh… turns out we’ve had two years’ worth of memories erased…” Mondo muttered.

“How!?”

“It might be easier if we explain that when it becomes relevant to what you’re discussing…” Kiyotaka suggested, “Instead of going off on a tangent.”

“True… I’ve not got much more to say anyway. Kamila was a normal student for three years, although she was starting to worry about what exactly the school wanted her there for, so she decided to hide the large piece of the Temsik meteor that she’d brought with her to research in one of the air purifiers she made… The one in the physics lab Kiyotaka died in… the first time.”

“Then she went out to classes like a good girl one day and that stupid hair man broke into her room and _stole_ us!” Missile growled.

“ _Before_ the student council deaths?” Kiyotaka asked.

“Hmm… no, I remember her talking about that.” Sissel remembered her crying on him… “She was upset that whoever had done it had hid the bodies for more than a week, so we couldn’t even _try_ to do anything about it…”

“ _And_ those extra students started not letting people out!” Missile added.

“ _Extra students?”_ Mondo asked.

“I… think he means the reserve course.” Kiyotaka translated. “They were students who paid to be here instead of being scouted…”

“Yeah… they didn’t like the council being killed, for some reason…” Sissel remembered, “That was right before we were trapped…”

“Well, what _we_ know is, we came to school and had one relatively normal year, before the student council were all murdered and the reserve course began protesting, because they thought the school had somehow _funded_ the murders…” Kiyotaka started explaining. “This was partly because they were being manipulated by an organisation called ‘Ultimate Despair’ who’s aim was to plunge the world into pointless war and chaos… which they did by… having the reserve students break into the school and… and kill all the Ultimate students.” Kiyotaka’s eyes dropped to the floor.

_All of them…?_ So… that meant poor little Kamila...

…He’d had his suspicions when she didn’t come to find them, especially after Mondo said the school was destroyed but… _dammit!_ He’d promised to look _after_ her!

“But… _Miss Kamila_ was an Ultimate student!” Missile whined.

“…Sorry…” The humans both muttered.

There was silence for a while before Missile spoke up… “But… aren’t _you two_ Ultimate students?”

“Yeah but… our class survived, and then apparently we hid in the school building for a year…”

“Why?” Sissel asked.

“Err… well… apparently Hope’s Peak’s massacre triggered a series of crazed riots all over the globe that resulted in the destruction of most of it…”

“Are… are you serious?” Was all Sissel could think to say, “That… that _can’t_ have happened!”

Because if _that_ had happened, then Yomiel, Lynne, Inspectors Jowd and Cabanela… _everyone_ he knew…

“They’ll be fine!” Missile announced. As if he could tell what Sissel was thinking…

“What do you mean?”

“They’re clever! They’ll be fine!” Missile insisted. “And I bet Miss Kamila’s fine as well! ‘Cause if _these_ dopes survived, then she would have as well!”

…So he was just denying it all then? Still… he had a point about their friends outside the school, he couldn't give them up for dead just yet… and no one had the heart to press the point about poor Kamila…

“So… you guys hid in the school for a year…?” Sissel prompted the humans.

“Err, yes! But then apparently someone murdered the headmaster, erased our memories, created Monokuma and told us all to kill each other…

“Which was probably Hagakure…” Mondo spat, “With help from that ghost he mentioned…”

“Come again?” Sissel asked.

“Ah… When he trapped us in the cold room, Hagakure said he’d been rescued once by a ghost, who then threatened to kill him again if he didn’t do as she told…”

“ _She?_ So it’s not _this_ guy then?” Sissel checked, referring to the dead man in the room…

“I reckon it’s Maizono…” Mondo muttered.

“But then how did we rescue her when she died in Naegi’s room, if she was already dead and a ghost?” Kiyotaka asked.

“It might be a different ghost who possessed her and had her send the text…” Sissel guessed. “And if they were moving about in that bear toy, then they could have also have been possessing this man into moving the corpses around…”

“That… would be plausible.” Kiyotaka mused.

“But then… who _is_ the ghost?” Mondo asked, “Who have we gotta be on the watch out for?”

“Well… it could be anyone. Unless we catch them obviously using a trick, we won’t know _who_ it is!”

“Or we convince Hagakure to talk, perhaps?” Kiyotaka suggested.

“I’d rather smash his face in for what he did ta Chi and Makoto…” Mondo growled.

“Ah… perhaps we could _stop_ that!” Kiyotaka realised. “If we talk to him while he’s in the process of murdering Chihiro, then we might be able to convince him to stop, and also stop him killing us all!”

“…I’m not getting any better ideas.” Sissel admitted. “So… where did you all die?”

“Err… a building organised by an organisation trying to stop this tragedy…” Kiyotaka answered vaguely. “All I know is that’s it _outside_ the school…”

“I guess that’s where we’re headed then.” Sissel agreed, and started carrying them to the main entrance.

An organisation stopping a tragedy sounded like exactly the sort of place Lynne and the others would have ended up if they’d survived… and if they _hadn’t,_ then he was in need of some new humans to keep watch over…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	16. (Missile POV)

They were finally going outside! Bye, bye gloomy school…

…Hello… gloomy… _outside?_ Was it night time? Everything was dark and looked like when Miss Lynne tried to cook for herself!

“Good thing I don’t need to breath…” Sissel miowed, as he started walking amongst the buildings…

“I know they said the air was polluted, _but_ …!”

“How the _fuck_ can we have time-travel on our side and not be able ta _fix this!?_ ”

“We’ll find _something_ we can do!” Missile barked to cheer them up. After all, they’d managed to help Mr. Yomiel and that whole thing had been _really_ bad!

“Well… I suppose it’s important not to lose hope…” Kiyotaka barked.

“Yeah… but this shit is depressing…” Mondo growled, “I mean… there’s a fucking memorial plaque on the building _right next to the school!”_

“Memorial plaque?” Sissel asked, stopping to look at the scribbles.

“Ah… apparently this is… it’s… from the school… we must have…” Kiyotaka whimpered.

“It’s… where the Ultimates ended up.” Mondo explained for him.

“So Miss Kamila’s there!” Missile realised, and jumped into the building through some bits and pieces scattered around… “ _MISS KAMILA!”_

“Missile _wait!_ They didn’t….” Sissel miowed after him, but he was jumping too fast to hear. He headed in, as quickly as possible, until he found a room with piles and piles of bones and old clothes…

“Miss Kamila…?” He cried out, jumping from item to item, looking for her little brown shoes, the dark blue dress she borrowed from Miss Lynne, her yellow hair ribbon, spotless white labcoat or her shiny red necklace… “MISS KAMILA!?”

He dug deeper and deeper through the pile, vaguely aware that Sissel was trying to call him back to the top of it, until finally, deep under a pile of bones, he spotted the little brown shoes, the dark blue dress, the labcoat, the pendant and the hair ribbon…

All covering the perfectly peacefully sleeping body of… “ _MISS KAMILA!”_

“Missile? Is that you?” She called out, as he jumped into her core.

“Yes! It’s ME, _MISSILE!_ ” He barked happily, “But… how can you _hear_ me?”

“Well… because I died…” She said, gently, “Along with all these people…”

“But… but you _look_ fine!” Missile cried, “You’re not all boney like them…”

“Well… that’s because I stabbed myself with some Temsik!” She smiled, “So you could come rescue me! And everyone else in the school!”

Ha! He’d _told_ Sissel that Miss Kamila was too smart to be gone! Even if she had ended up dying after all… “Good girl, Miss Kamila! I’ll go tell Sissle and our new friends and we’ll come save you!” He promised, “Wait right here!”

“I don’t really have a choice…” She muttered something as he started jumping back up the piles of bones…

“Sissle! Sissle!” He barked excitedly as he found the cat, picking his way across the bones gingerly, “I found Miss Kamila!”

“You… you did?” He seemed confused.

“Yep! She’s ready for us to rescue her! Come on!” Missile told him, before starting to dive back down to here, this time followed by the other three ghosts as well… “I’m back!” He announced, once he returned to Miss Kamila…

“Wha… _Kamila?_ Why…?” Sissel arrived soon after him.

“Sissel! It’s you!” She smiled, “I’ve been waiting…”

“ _HOW!?”_ He asked.

“I had a small piece of Temsik on a pen that I always kept  on me… ” She explained,

 “So you’ve been here for over a _year?_ What have you been doing?” Sissel asked.

“Well… I’ve only just about started managing to get my body to move. My ghost doesn’t have much reach and I didn’t want to risk getting caught or dislodging the pen before I could move properly,  so… I’ve just been stuck here… waiting…” She frowned.

So poor Miss Kamila had been stuck in her little body down here by herself with no one to play with for over a _year!?_

“ _I’m so sorry!”_ Missile whined. “We _would_ have rescued you, but some mean man came and trapped us!”

 “It’s not your fault!” She smiled, “But… do you know what happened to the school?”

“Ahh… It might be easier if we let Kiyotaka explain it…” Sissel admitted, as the white boy and his friend arrived.

“Huh? _Ishimaru?”_ Miss Kamila was surprised, “How did _you_ turn into a ghost? Weren’t you barricading yourself into your classroom? There wasn’t any Temsik in there…”

“Err… I’m sorry, have we met?” Taka asked her, “I lost my memories…”

“Oh! Yes, that can happen sometimes, when you first die!” Miss Kamila told him, “But if it doesn’t wear off soon it might be that you aren’t who you think you are, for example Sissle here…”

“Ah, no! It’s not because of my dying! It’s because…” Taka and Sissel started yapping about everything they’d yapped about back in the school, while Mondo gave him some more lovely pettings…

“I knew I made the right choice…” Miss Kamila whispered, finally.

“Err… what choice?” Taka asked.

“In my neck is a pen, with a bit of Temsik in it, which has been keeping my body in a state between life and death of the last year.” Miss Kamila told him, “Once I take it out, I’ll die and you’ll be able to go back to the time of my death… when the reserve course attacked the school.”

“Ya mean… we can go back and fix _everything!?”_ Mondo barked happily, “Hell’s yeah! Let’s _do_ this!”

“Well… everything except the student council deaths… but yes! Just hold on a moment…” She told him.

Back in the living world, Miss Kamila’s body jerked upright and managed to shift the pile of bones on top of her, pull a little stick out of her neck and then shakily stand up and stumble out of the room…

“Where are you going?” Missile asked her.

“To the school… that way you’ll be closer to where I died!” She answered.

“Oh! Clever girl!” Missile was lucky to have such a clever mistress to look after!

…They weren’t quite so lucky as Miss Kamila had hoped, though… Her power was only strong enough to get them to the big school door. But that was okay, because she knew when and where she was going to be when she died!

“At 11:46 I’ll pass by classroom 1-A.”

“That’s really specific timing ya got there…” Mondo told her.

“Well… you can thank your boyfriend for that!” Miss Kamila laughed.

“ _WHAT!?”_ Taka barked.

“Are… are we _that_ fuckin’ obvious?”

“Yeah…? Half the _school_ knew about you two! I mean, you used to give yourselves detentions for PDA and everything!” Miss Kamila laughed.

“Ah… of course… our missing memories…” Taka laughed.

“But, it _is_ pretty obvious _now_ as well…” Sissel added, which made them both turn a funny red colour. “But enough joking around, Kiyotaka, if you could take us back now?”

“Right!” He nodded, and the flashy time thing thing happened…

And then they were back in the school, watching lots and lots of people rushing through the front door, almost falling over each other… and some poor, hurt students on the floor…

“ _Jesus…”_ Mondo growled.

“We’re too late…” Taka whined, "Even with the extra time..."

“We can stop _some_ of it though…” Miss Kamila told them. “At least, I hope so…”

“We’ll see what we can do.” Sissel told her.

They made their way though the school, mostly by riding on the extra students and changing directions when Taka or Miss Kamila said so, until they finally saw Miss Kamila running past another Taka as they shouted to each other…

“Is that _me?”_ Taka asked, “How did _I_ survive when I’m so close to where _you_ died?”

“You barricaded yourselves in that room…” Miss Kamila told him.

“So why didn’t you _join_ him?” Sissle sighed.

“I thought if I could find out who was causing this, then you guys could mess with them!” She told him.

“Did you?” Missile asked her.

“Well… no. I kind of made the wrong choice as to which direction to run in…” Miss Kamila said, as her alive self turned left at a corner… only to run into a big group of the extra students who ran after her, even as she turned around to run away… And she got a pen with a shiny blue bit on the end of it out of her pocket.

Where these the people who were going to kill her? She was getting the pen out ready to do it _herself_ once they caught up to her!?

“GRRR… Leave Miss Kamila ALOOOONE!” Missile growled and jumped into their feet, swapping all their shoes onto the wrong feet so they tripped over and she could run away from them…

“Ah! That _changed…_ something…” Taka barked confusedly.

“Her fate changed… she’s not out of the woods yet, but if needs be, we’ll be able to reset to _that_ point in time instead of 10 minutes ago…”

“Well, that’ll save us a ton of time!” Mondo laughed, “Good work, Missile!”

“Hmm… It’ll help if we can tell me where to go, so I don’t make anymore mistakes like that though…” Miss Kamila’s ghost said, and jumped into Miss Kamila’s body.

The old Miss Kamila stopped running and awkwardly moved to one of the nearby lockers on the wall, and shakily drew a big arrow on it…

“There! Hopefully I’ll understand…” Miss Kamila’s ghost came back out…

The old Miss Kamila looked at the locker for a bit… so Missile swapped it with one further down the hall…

“Missile? Is that you?” The old Miss Kamila asked, “I’ve got it! I’ll follow you!”

“So… we tell the little lady where to go, try to keep her safe, and if we get it wrong we can reset…” Sissel summarised…

“Yes! It might take a while, but if we get a good idea of where the students are and who’s controlling them, then we may be able to stop this attack for good!” Taka agreed.

“Fuck yeah! We’ll fix this if we have to reset a million times!” Mondo agreed.

“Yes! Because we’re all Ace Ghosties!” Missile agreed.

“Thanks, you guys…” Miss Kamila laughed at them all, “I _knew_ I could rely on you!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope how I'm characterising the, now more grown up, Kamila makes sense? She seems pretty unflappable in the game, so I figure she'd be pretty sensible about the Tragedy as well.  
> Thanks for reading!


	17. (Past Kamila POV)

Kamila checked the inner pockets of her labcoat… keys, wallet, phone… check. Torch, pocket survival kit, Temsik-on-a-pen… check!

Her teacher noticed her do it, of course. He always did. He’d even mentioned it to that therapist girl in the year above her once. She’d just told him that, as nervous habits went, it wasn’t that big a deal. And her Dad had just looked at him like he was an idiot when he mentioned it on parent’s day… After all, it was him and Cabanela who had told her to do it in the first place…

_(“Truuuuuuust me, baby! Checking your pockets is faaaaaaaar less embarrassing than leaving your gun in the room with a suspect! Ahahaha!”)_

_(“But I don’t have a gun…”)_

_(“There’s still no such thing as being too careful… Especially not when you’re researching top-secret information!”)_

Three years ago, she’d thought they were being over-dramatic… but now? She was starting to worry more… something about this school had just seemed… _off_ this last year. And that was _before_ the student council had been murdered and their corpses hidden just long enough to stop her from being able to do anything about it. That _couldn’t_ have been a coincidence, could it? Her Dad and Yomiel hadn’t thought so either… _Someone_ other than them and the school knew about ghost tricks… well, either that or the school really _had_ caused the council murders, like the reserve course were saying…

And that was another thing to worry about… the reserve course had been stood outside the gates for _weeks…_ but the school didn’t seem to be bothering to do anything to placate them… Even _with_ Sissel and Missile there to protect her, it was still worrying her… Especially as it sounded like there was a lot of noise coming from the corridor outside…

She wasn’t the only one who’d noticed it… several members of her class were starting to mutter amongst themselves.

“…Wait here. I’ll go tell them to be quiet.” The teacher told them.

…This didn’t feel right. She didn’t want to be sat waiting for him to come back, if something _was_ going to happen, she needed to be on her feet, ready to run…

Torch, pocket survival kit, Temsik-on-a-pen… She made sure she had everything important as she opened the door… Just in time to hear her teacher screaming as a group of six reserve students surrounded him, cackling gleefully as they raised bits of pipe and baseball bats above him…

_(“Run! RUN! NEVER stay still! If you stay still you’ll be dead!”)_

Her father’s old ‘survival training’ shot through her head and spurred her to run… no place in mind, just somewhere _away_ from _them…_

_(“Sweetie, do you really think she needs survival training to go to school?”)_

_(“Yes, Alma, I do.”)_

_(“I just think it’s a bit much…”)_

_(“It’s alright, Mom…”)_

_(“At least you’re a better runner than me!”)_

_(“Lynne, baby, eeeeeeeeveryone’s a better runner than you!”)_

Lynne had had a point though… she was a good runner… not that it was doing any good _now…_ There were reserve students _everywhere!_ And all of them were carrying weapons… covered in blood… killing her fellow students… and she could hear them starting to chase after her once they’d done so…

_(“Run! Swerve! Pay attention to what you’re doing! You can’t just rely on Sissel to rescue you if you die!”)_

_(“Although… Knowing about Temsik does give you an advantage…”)_

_(“Yomiel… Don’t go giving her ideas like that!”)_

She couldn’t run forever… and the reserve students weren’t thinning out, whereas the Ultimates _were…_ She was probably going to die here, wasn’t she?

But _she_ knew about Temsik, she even _had_ some with her… Dying wasn’t the end of the world for _her…_ But it _was_ for everyone around her…

She had to use her advantage to help them… She needed to keep herself alive as long as she could, find out who was causing this, and do as much as she could to stop them, before they killed her! And then she had to make sure her body stayed intact, in case they hid her from Sissel and Missile for more than a week…

She reached into the pocket for her pen… if she killed _herself_ with it, she’d end up like Yomiel, right? When they’d managed to go back _ten years_ to stop _his_ death…

That was it then. She had a plan. Was there anything else she could do? It might help the ghosts if she had _some_ reference for the time and place… But she didn’t have time to roll up her sleeve to check her watch…

“The barricade’s ready! But has anyone seen Hagakure? Or Maizono? Should we wait for them?” Was that the hall monitor from last year’s intake? She could hear him from right down the hallway… And _he_ was just the sort to tell her the exact time!

“Ishimaru! What time is it!?” She shouted to him…

“11:46!” He answered on instinct, “Ah! But you shouldn’t be out there! The reserve students…”

“Are right behind me! Get that barricade up _now!_ ” She gave him a final warning as she ran past.

“But what about…” She could hear him shouting after her as she carried on to a T-junction in the hall… which way… right or left?

She went left, only to come face-to-face with a group of reserve students.

She slammed one foot on the ground and pushed off in the opposite direction as quickly as she could… but it probably wasn’t fast enough, she’d got too close, and she could hear them getting closer… this was going to be _it_ … wasn’t it?

“What the?” “Ahhh!” “Watch where you’re…! Ooof!” There was a chorus of surprised noises and the sound of thumps… had they all tripped? Were her friends here to help her?

Suddenly, it felt like there was a fog in her mind… something disconnecting her from her body, which turned sideways and used the pen in here hand to draw on one of the lockers… Was this Yomiel? It was his power, but he hadn’t died, had he?

Soon, the fog in her mind dissipated, and she was left looking at a locker with an arrow drawn on it… which then disappeared and reappeared further up the hallways…

“Missile? Is that you?” It _had_ to be, right? That was his swapping power! “I’ve got it! I’ll follow you!” After all, regardless of who had possessed her, she knew she could trust her faithful dog… even if she hadn’t actually _seen_ him in years since he died, just evidence of his continued existence in the form of similarly shaped things randomly swapping places…

She carried on running, keeping an eye on the arrow.

To anyone who didn’t know about ghost tricks, it probably seemed miraculous that she was staying alive so long. Lockers fell over and lights dropped from the ceiling just in time to flatten reserve students who were about to hit her, at times she took seemingly random, circuitous routes that let her lose her pursuers for just long enough to catch her breath, after a while the elevators opened up for her even though she was halfway down the hall, and shut just in time to stop the reserves from catching her… How many time would they have had to reset to get the timing right on _that_ one?

It took her to the fifth floor, and as she stepped out the fog filled her mind again, leading her over to the wall…

_‘Go 2 council massacre. Quietly. Don’t let her C U.’_ Was the message ‘she’ wrote to herself.

Well, okay then? Would be nice to know who exactly ‘she’ was, but perhaps it wasn’t important for her to know.

She slowly paced to the room that she knew they attacks had happened in and peeked around the open doorframe cautiously…

The sight of long blue hair was enough to make her straighten back up and out of sight… that was _Maizono._ That must be the ‘she’ she couldn’t let see her…

Kamila wasn’t surprised… that girl was always odd. Most of the time she seemed fine, a normal, everyday girl who hadn’t let her fame get to her head. But then there were times where her reactions seemed overblown and dramatic, like she was a different person. Or she seemed to know things she shouldn’t… and the more she knew, the harder it was to believe that she just had ‘good intuition’...

What should Kamila do? They’d obviously led her here to stop Maizono… doing whatever it was she was doing. But how? There weren’t any other ways into that classroom, and Maizono was facing the door!

“She’s up here somewhere!” _AAHHH!_ That was the reserve course! What did she need to do!? Did she need to do anything? Or did she just need to get close enough for the ghosts to stop Maizono?

Wait… _Was_ she close enough for the ghosts to stop Maizono? She risked a quick peak around the corner… she wasn’t, was she? She needed to close the distance… _without_ being seen… which meant she needed to throw something…

_“There_ she is!” “Kill her!” “Kill the Ultimates!” “Kill them all!”

She panicked and threw the pen inside the room, just before the reserve students surrounded her…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!  
> I kinda figure Jowd would be the sort to give his daughter survival training before letting her go out into the world by herself, ghost protection or not...


	18. (Present Kamila POV)

_“Reset!”_ Missile demanded, for… who knows? It must have been several hundred times already…

“Err… r-right…” Ishimaru stammered.

“ _Wait!”_ Kamila told him.

“Why? There’s no way you’re getting outta this!” Oowada scowled at the group surrounded her past self.

“But… that body Maizono’s crouching by… isn’t that Hagakure?” Kamila pointed out, “Didn’t you say he’s the one who helped her? Won’t this be _when_ she got him to help?”

“Are you suggesting we hop over to him and save him ourselves?” Sissel asked. “So he’d in debt to _us,_ not _her?”_

“Yes!” Kamila agreed.

“But… you threw away your special stick!” Missile cried, “That means when those bad students kill you, you won’t be a ghost!”

“But… I’m already a ghost… so I can just jump back with you… I think…” Admittedly this was something no one else had tried before…

“You _think?”_ Sissel sighed, “What if it doesn’t work like that!?”

“Well… after having to wait for a year… I think I’d be okay, if it ended here.” She tried to smile, even though she might be saying goodbye… “I want to be able to help stop the Tragedy… Even if it means I might disappear…”

“Look… I get what you’re thinking but… what if this _doesn’t_ work _?”_ Oowada suddenly asked. “What if we go back, rescue Hagakure like we’re supposed ta, and then get back ta the present and find out it’s changed jack shit and you’re still _dead!”_

“Well… I don’t know what would happen in that case…” Kamila admitted. “I _guess_ my ghost would come with you all, but I wouldn’t have a body left anymore!” She guessed.

“I don’t mean ‘what’s the fucking practicalities of the thing’!” Oowada snapped, “I mean, how’s _he_ gonna feel if you trade _your_ life for _his!?”_

What kind of question was that? How would _she_ know how’d he’d feel?

“…Grateful?” Ishimaru guessed… “I mean… if someone gave their life for mine, I’d be _incredibly_ grateful!”

“…You’d _think_ that… but that ain’t what’s it like…”

“Well, he _ought_ to be grateful! Miss Kamila’s _important!”_ Missile growled. “ _Much_ more important than _him!”_

“Yeah! That’s my point! He ain’t gonna feel grateful, he’s gonna feel like a sack of shit for taking away someone who actually _matters!”_ Mondo cried.

“Mondo… are you… thinking about your brother?” Ishimaru asked him, gently.

“…Yes.” He admitted.

“I… I’m sure Daiya would have felt exactly the same… if you’d have died and he’d have had to live with inadvertently pressuring you into that race…” Ishimaru picked an interesting time to start giving his boyfriend therapy…

“Besides it doesn’t matter how _he_ feels… right now, we _need_ to rescue him! That’s the only chance we have to bring _anyone_ back!” Sissel interrupted it.

“I still think it’s a stupid idea…” Oowada griped.

“Well… think of it like this… _He’s_ the one who caught Missile, right?” She asked.

“Yes!” Missile whined, “Even though I jumped about between lots of things!”

“So… he can detect ghosts… that must be why Maizono blackmailed him! So without _him,_ Maizono wouldn’t have been able to catch you!” Kamila explained, “Aaand… what would Missile have done as soon as I didn’t get back to my room on time?”

“Come and found you and rescued you!” Missile barked.

“See? So either way, I’d have been fine!”

“…I still think this is a stupid idea…” Oowada muttered.

“But… the whole _world_ is at stake!” Ishimaru cried, “Isn’t that worth a risk?” Oowada still didn’t look convinced. “We’d stop Chihiro’s death, as least…”

“I guess…” Oowada muttered.

“Right! So let’s go talk to them!” Kamila insisted, and jumped from the pen into Hagakure’s core… Where his spirit was mid-conversation with Maizono...

“Look, Sayaka, I’m not stupid, y’know! You’re just covering for that other ghost! And I’m not taking down these wards so they can possess _me_ as well!” Hagakure was shouting, and waving about some scraps of paper with ink on them.

“Wow… your detection ability must be really strong for you to have noticed _him!_ Even if we _are_ talking…” Sayaka smiled cheerfully, “But being possessed isn’t so bad! It’s made me famous, after all… and all I have to do in return is be willing to have my body do the odd... _bad thing_ here and there, and keep quiet about it…”

Well… that explained a lot about Maizono! She didn’t just _seem_ to switch personalities, she _did_ switch personalities! But with _who?_ And how were they hiding themselves from everyone but Hagakure?

“Urgg… You might _think_ it’s like that… but sooner or later whoever-that-is is going to make you do something that ruins your life!” Hagakure sighed, “Count me _out!_ ”

“Well, that’s a shame… it means we can’t bring you back to life…” Maizono shrugged, “And then you won’t have a life to ‘ruin’ anyway!”

“I don’t need bringing back to life! I’m not dead!” Oh, dear… He was really in denial…

“Hiro, you’ve been crushed under the lights, silly!” Maizono laughed, “Of _course_ you’re dead!”

“Well… I’m not stupid enough to think you two would just do that to help me, either!” Hagakure insisted, “There’s gonna be some catch, isn’t there!?”

“Yep! There always is!” Maizono smiled. “We’re only helping you because we need you to use your ability to see ghosts to help us _catch_ some!”

“You’re saying you’ll bring me back to life if I agree to to catch some ghosts…?” Hagakure asked, “Uhh… are they… _bad_ ghosts?”

“ _Very_ bad!” Maizono grinned and nodded.

“ _No we are NOT!”_ Everyone jumped as Missile got offended and barked loudly at the pair… “I’m a _good_ doggie and you made me sit and wait in the freezy room for a _year_ before I could help poor Miss Kamila, who’s a _good girl to! YOU’RE_ the _bad_ one!” He finished, and angrily rush forward…

Only to get squashed up against a glowing wall that appeared around the man they were supposed to save.

“ _Ow!”_ Missile whined, before growling and trying again…

“ _Huh…_ gotta admit, I was _not_ expecting Hagakure’s bullshit ta actually work…” Oowada admitted, as Missile crashed into the ward again…

“Uhh…” Hagakure just looked between Maizono, who was starting to look angry, and the rest of them… “Which of you are the _good_ guys then?”

“Us…! We’ve got _Taka_ on our side!” Oowada rushed to point out to him.

“That doesn’t mean anything!” Maizono snapped, desperately. “He could just be in disguise!”

“Hmm… that’s a fair point actually…” Ishimaru frowned as he considered Maizono’s point. “And I’ve lost my memories so I can’t even offer to supply you with information only I should know, because I’m liable to have forgotten it…”

“Nah… that’s definitely our class rep!” Hagakure laughed, “Who _else_ would come out with ‘yes, you’re right I might be an imposter’!”

“Well… logically speaking…” Ishimaru started to argue.

“Kyoudai, just… let it go.” Mondo sighed. “So, can ya drop this ward thing? But, like, just for _us!_ Not _her!_ Or _them_ or whatever the fuck it is?”

“Yeah, sure, let me work out some calculations…”

“What… NO! _Godamnit, NO!_ I _need_ him! We can’t do… whatever this plan is unless _I_ can use _him!”_ Maizono yelled in frustration and started pounding at the barrier that was stopping her from getting to Hagakure…

But… why did she say ‘whatever this plan is’? Did she not know what she was _causing?_

“So… if we rescue Hagakure, we really _will_ stop the Tragedy!” Kamila smiled.

“ _Tradegy?_ What are you talking about!?” Maizono cried, as she continued to pound on the barrier, apparently she really _didn’t…_ “And how are you even _here!?_ None of you should have died, except… _YOU!”_ She glared at Kamila… “He was _right!_ You _were_ hiding a piece of that rock from us!” She slammed her fist against the barrier extra hard, making it shoot crackling lines of purple energy across it…

“How did you even know about that!?” Kamila asked her, “It was only supposed to be the _school_ who knew about that!”

“Uhh… good guys? If you’re gonna rescue me, _now’s_ the time!” Hagakure recoiled away from Maizono…

“Wait… no! You can’t!” Maizono cried, “ _Please!_ If I can’t do this, he’ll…”

“R-right!” Ishimaru cut her off as he raced to turn back time before Maizono’s spirit broke through the wards, and Kamila’s chance to interrogate her disappeared into streams of blue sand travelling upwards and flashes of gold clocks swirling around them all…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm hoping some of this is starting to make sense now! Thank you for reading!  
> Also, I think I may have made Hagakure way too awesome in this AU, but I liked the idea of his abilities being related to ghosts in this AU. But I'll go into his abilities more next chapter.


	19. (Past Yasuhiro POV)

Yasuhiro moved quickly through the corridors of the fifth floor… he didn’t know _how_ Sayaka had got rid of all of the guards from up here, but he wasn’t going to let go of the chance to get in the crime scene and do a reading of the place! He’d be sure to find out who’d murdered them all, right?

And then maybe the reserve course would stop yelling outside the school all the time, and everyone could relax a little. The way things were now, he was getting some seriously bad vibes about _everything…_

Huh… that was weird… it sounded like there were people talking in the room the massacre happened in… Had Sayaka let other people in on this? Maybe she’d included Kyoko… that’d make some sense…

He listened carefully as he made his way down the corridor…

“So… once you arrive, we’ll have to work quickly…” he overheard a guy saying as he approached the door, but he couldn’t _see_ anyone yet… “Perhaps we can find some way to barricade the door and then…”

“He’s _here!”_ Yasuhiro suddenly heard a shout that… kinda sounded like a dog barking as well? Weird… he cautiously turned to look through the door…

“HELLO!” There was a small brown dog sat on the floor of the room… A _ghost_ dog… “Oh… hey there, little guy…” Yasuhiro sighed… One of the council had had a _pet_  with them?And they’d just killed it!? That was just _cold_ man!

“…Did he just respond to Missile?” Yasuhiro’s attention was drawn upwards by a girls voice that he sorta knew…

There wasn’t just the ghost of a dog in the room… behind him were the ghosts of a cat, the girl who’d spoken (Jowd, wasn’t it?) along with Mondo, Taka and… _himself!?_

“What happened to all of _you_ guys!? And why do _you_ look like _me?”_ He asked them all, “Am I having an out of body experience _without me_ or something?”

“Uhh… kinda?” The _other_ him said, “See… I used to be you, but I went into this room and the lights fell on me and I died and became a spirit. But then all of these guys turned up and we came back in time so we can stop that from happening to _you…_ who is me…”

“Wow… that sounds like a wild story…” Yasuhiro admitted, “Guess I’m not doing this reading the…”

“Wait, what the _fuck!_ How come he can _see_ us!?” The ghost of Mondo suddenly yelled.

“Didn’t you hear Sayaka say? I can detect ghosts, man!” The other Yasuhiro told him.

“Besides, I’ve already told you that a million times!” Yasuhiro reminded Mondo, “Don’t you ever listen to me?”

“Actually, we lost our memories…” Taka said. Wow… that was kinda messed up! “Although I suspect we wouldn’t have believed such a fantastical sounding statement regardless…”

“Well… we’ve ran into people who can _sense_ ghosts before…” The cat started, “But even _they_ couldn’t actually see or hear us!”

“At least it makes saving him easi…” Jowd started to say, before there was a loud crash as the set of lights behind them crashed to the floor, scattering debris all over the floor…

“…Holy _Vishnu!_ If I hadn’t stopped to talk to you guys, I’d have been _under_ that!” He realised.

“I already _told_ you that, man!” his other-self cried out, “Geez… even _I_ don’t listen to me…”

“Ahh… that changed his _fate…_ But I don’t think he’s safe yet!” Taka announced.

“Why not? Is another light gonna fall on me?” He started looking around for a safe place to stand…

“Well, Maizono’ll probably try _something_ once she gets to the door and realises you’re not actually dead, right? _”_ Mondo asked.

“Sayaka!?” The sweet little pop-idol? “Why would she…?”

“Whoops! Sorry, self-dude, I forgot to say! Maizono’s possessed!” The other him told him, embarrassedly.

“Ah, gotcha! And she’ll be coming through the door, right?” He checked, “I’ll set up a circle then!” He quickly set to work, grabbing some chalk out of his pocket and using it to draw an exorcism circle on the wooden floor… much to the annoyance of Taka’s ghost.

“There’s bloodstains on the floor, Kyoudai… A bit of chalk ain’t gonna matter much…” Mondo told him.

“But… what’s he _doing?”_ Jowd asked.

“An exorcism! We’ll get that ghost out of Maizono’s body!” His other self explained.

…Of course, none of them, except for his other-self, believed him, and they all started talking about how’d they try to stop Sayaka after they ‘reset’, whatever that meant… He ignored them though, finishing the circle and getting a paper talisman out ready to ambush Sayaka with as soon as she stepped into the circle… Which didn’t take long…

 _“Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus, omnis satanica potestas, omnis incursio infernalis adversarii, omnis legio, et secta diabolica!”_ He quickly jumped out from behind the door, pressing the paper charm onto Sayaka’s forehead and recited the first exorcism that came to mind…

“There’s no way this could actually _work_ …” The cat started to mutter…

 _“AAAAAIIIIIIEEEEEEYYYYAAAA!”_ He was cut off as Sayaka clutched at her head and let out a super-high pitched scream… “What… what was that?” She asked, glaring at Yasuhiro and starting to breathe heavily in panic, _“What did you do!?”_

“An exorcism! So now you’ve not got that evil ghost possessing you!” He told her.

 _“WHAT!?_ How could you _do_ that!?” Sayaka cried, “He… he’s been _helping_ me! I wouldn’t have become _famous_ if not for him!”

“But he was gonna fuckin’ _kill_ her, later!” Mondo shouted… but how would he _know_ that!? And better yet, how to convince Sayaka…

“Uhh… maybe he _was…_ but that doesn’t mean he you could trust him!” Yasuhiro told her, “I mean… wasn’t he just trying to _kill_ me?”

“He was going to bring you back to life!” Sayaka cried, “We just wanted your help, that’s all…”

“Uhh… couldn’t he have just _asked,_ if that’s all he wanted?” Yasuhiro asked her…

“I suggested that but he… he didn’t want to…” Sayaka admitted.

 _“See!?_ Totally not trustworthy!” Yasuhiro cried, “C’mon… let’s get out of here and have a chat about this…”

“You want to _chat_ about _ruining_ my _future!?”_ Sayaka growled…

“Aww, c’mon! You think you still needed him?” Yasuhiro asked, “Aren’t you famous enough already?”

“Ahh… you think so?” She looked startled for a moment…

 _“Sure!_ You’re the world’s most popular girl!” Yasuhiro reminded her, before running some calcuations… “And I predict there’s a 85% chance you’ll stay that way for the rest of your life!”

“Well… maybe… I can still keep my dream without him…” She frowned, “Alright… lets get out of here before the gaurds come back…”

“Sure!” Yasuhiro told her, and started getting her back to the lift… While keeping an eye on the group of ghosts that had started hanging out in his stuff…

“I… still don’t think he’s entirely safe…” Taka’s ghost was muttering.

“You think Maizono’s still gonna try and off me?” His own ghost replied.

“That doesn’t seem likely…” The cat decided.

“What about those nasty extra students?” The dog barked.

 _“What…!?_ But… we got _rid_ of the other ghost!” Taka cried, “That should have saved _everyone,_ shouldn’t it?”

“Not if he already gave ‘em orders and let ‘em in the school, it wouldn’t have!” Mondo yelled.

“You need to get to classroom 1-A.” Jowd’s ghost suddenly told him, just before the lift doors opened on the first floor… _“Quickly!”_

Whatever was going on, they all seemed super worried about it…

“Uhh… hey, Sayaka, race you to homeroom classroom!” He announced, trying not to scare her…

 _“What?_ Why?” Yeah… that didn’t work…

“Just come on!” He gave up and grabbed her wrist and started dragging her down the hallway... 

“The barricade’s ready! But has anyone seen Hagakure? Or Maizono? Should we wait for them?” He could hear Taka… the _living_ Taka, not his ghost, shouting down the hallway from the room…

“We’re here, hang on!” Yasuhiro shouted to him.

“What? Barricade? Why do you need a…?” Sayaka obviously had no more idea than him what was going on…

 _“There_ you are!” Taka cried as they got to the door… “Get inside, _quickly!_ We need to hide! Apparently the reserve stud…”

“Ishimaru! What time is it!?” He was interrupted by the still-living Jowd, who was running towards them, and showing no signs of stopping…

“11:46!” Taka could be depended on to know the time, even in the middle of an emergency, “Ah! But you shouldn’t be out there! The reserve students…”

“Are right behind me! Get that barricade up _now!_ ” Jowd snapped as she ran past the door…

“What’s she _doing?_ Is she making sure everyone knows?” The still alive Mondo asked, from inside the room… in fact, the whole class was in here…

“Should we help her?” Hina asked…

“There was the announcement, if people are too stupid to listen to that, it’s their own fault!” Togami snapped, “Get the barricade finished!”

“Indeed… There will be little we can do now…” Sakura sighed sadly, as she, Mondo, Mukuro and Taka shut the door and started pushing everything in the room against it…

“What… what’s going on…?” Sayaka asked, “Why do you need to barricade the room?”

“Geez… what rock have you been hiding under?” Junko asked her, “The reserve students have gone nuts and are trying to kill us! So we gotta stay safe in here until they stop…”

“They’re… trying to _kill!?”_ Sayaka went pale, _“That’s_ what they’re doing?”

“Uhh… Sayaka? Are you okay…?” Makoto asked, right before she fainted, “Oh _crap!”_ Makoto cried as Yasuhiro just about managed to catch her…

“Hmm… she might have inadvertently taken the best course of action there…” Kyoko commented, starting to sit on the floor, “If we all stay low and quiet, they might not realise we’re in here…”

Pretty much everyone jumped down to floor at that, and started glancing around nervously at each other in tense silence, except for the ghosts, who seemed to be having a discussion and came to the conclusion that, although they couldn’t do anything about the reserve students, at least they’d got rid of the ghosts and stopped some riots…

“Hey… so, past-self-dude! You’re all gonna be fine now! At least, everyone in this room...” Hah! If only he could tell everyone that, and have them believe him… “So, we’re gonna go back to the future now! It’s uhh… kinda a bummer we couldn't stop this whole thing, but apparently it doesn’t work like that…” His other-self sighed, “ _Be_ you later, I guess!”

Yasuhiro nodded, enough to show he’d understood, but not so much everyone else noticed, and then the ghosts disappeared up in a cyclone of blue sand…

The next few minutes were just more silence, everyone looking towards the door and windows worriedly, except for Mukuro, who was just squinting at her younger sister instead…

“Junko…? Are you… _alright?”_ She finally asked, quietly.

“Like, I’m fine! A few reserve students won't scare me when we’re all safe in this room, right?” Junko smiled confidently to reassure her.

“Ah… that wasn’t what I…” Mukuro started to correct her but…

“Muku, are you really that _stupid_ that you don't get what's going on? Just keep quiet and _do as I tell you_ , and everyone will be fine!” Junko got unusually snappy with her, “But if you start running that dumb mouth of yours _someone going to die!_ Got it!?”

“Ah… okay…” Mukuro agreed, still looking pretty freaked out by whatever was worrying her… _and_ her sister snapping at her!

Still… this whole thing _was_ pretty messed up, right? It was no wonder everyone was getting stressed out, right?

So why was Junko suddenly giving him a huge case of the heebie-jeebies?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok! So Hagakure's power! I'm thinking he was born with a MUCH stronger version of Beauty's 'sixth sense' that allows him to actually see and hear ghosts, which then led to him learning various 'totally-not-occult' techniques for dealing with/ protecting himself from them (which actually work).  
> That exorcism was copied from the show Supernatural.  
> Also, thanks for continuing to read!


	20. (Hagakure POV)

“Well, it _does_ seem like Hagakure’s going to be safe now…” Taka's ghost thought out loud, as Yasuhiro’s past self and the rest of their class all quietly sank to the floor. “But… what about the other Ultimates?”

“We’re not going to be able to help them, are we?” Jowd sighed. “The best we can do is save ourselves…”

“But… we got rid of that evil ghost, right!?” Mondo reminded them, “So… all the _other_ stuff that happened after… that’ll have stopped, right?”

“So Miss Lynne will be safe!” The dog cheered.

“And so will Yomiel and everyone else we know…” The cat agreed.

“That’s… that’s _true…”_ Taka nodded, “It might be a blow to the people… but without that ghost influencing everything, they’ll recover and still be able to keep the world on track, _without_ rioting!”

“Yeah…” Jowd sighed, “It’s probably the best we’re going to manage, isn’t it?”

“I think so…” The cat agreed “Let’s go back to the future then! And see how much we managed to save!”

“Uhh… how’s this work, exactly?” Yasuhiro asked them all…

“Ah! Right! No one’s explained it to you!” Taka realised, “What happens now is, we’ll go back to the time frame _we_ originally came from, in order to rescue you, which is a period roughly 1 year from now…” He explained.

“Basically, _he’ll_ carry on as he woulda done normally…” Mondo pointed at his other self, “And then suddenly _you’ll_ take over and find yerself in your body at some place, with no idea how ya got there from here…”

Well… that kinda sounded horrible? What happened to the other version of him, who’d been living his life normally up until then? Did he just disappear or something?

“You’ll understand it better when you get there!” Jowd promised him, “And _we’ll_ all be alive, so we come and help you understand it!”

“Alright, but… lemme just check out with myself, alright?” He asked.

They agreed, and he gave himself a final pep-talk, before Taka did his freaky light show again…

And then he was stood in a classroom, a different one now, watching Makoto walk out of the door. Huh… it looked like this was classroom 4-A, except someone there was a doodle of Makoto and some weird bear thing on the blackboard, along with a kid’s poem… had he and Makoto just done that? Makoto didn’t seem like the type, and _he_ didn’t get why it was there either…

_“Well, hello there!”_ A horrible high-pitched voice suddenly greeted him from behind.

“ _AAHH!_ How’d you get in here!?” He spun around to see who was talking to him, “And what _are_ you!?” He asked, because there was no way a stuffed, black and white bear was talking to him… at least not one that wasn’t being possessed by a ghost, anyway…

“Upupupupu! I _knew_ it! As soon as I saw where Ishimaru snuffed it, I _knew_ this would be the time when this whole mess had started!” The bear thing laughed, “That Jowd… she turned out to be _waaaay_ more of a nuisance than it was worth, getting her in the school! Do you have any idea how long it took to get that goddamn rock out without breaking the stupid air purifier!? Or finding her body just so I could take out a stupid pen?”

“Uhh…” Hiro didn’t get what it was talking about, other than that it somehow knew about the ghosts who’d saved him…

“Oh… but you don’t know what I’m talking about, do you? You’ve lost your memories from the last year, haven’t you!? Or overwritten them, more like!” The bear laughed at him, “Which means I’ve gotta go over your special rules all over again… Those wards you have sure are a _pain!”_

It thought his wards were a problem? So… “You’re a ghost?” Hiro guessed.

“Yep! Which leads me to special rule number 1: No telling anyone about ghosts, or trying to put wards on anyone else!”

“And what happens if I don’t follow that rule?”

“I turn off the air purifier!” The bear laughed.

“So?”

_“Urrghh!_ Geez, you don’t even remember _that_ now?” The bear complained, “I can’t be bothered to explain it all… this is why I told you to write everything you know down, so just read it for yourself! Just remember your special rules still apply!”

And then suddenly the bear thing disappeared.

But… how was he supposed to know _where_ he’d written this all down? Unless he kept it somewhere on him?

He checked through all his pockets, and eventually found a small notebook, filled with his own distinctive handwriting. Well, let’s see what had happened since he’d been rescued.

Oh, man… this was a total _bummer!_ Apparently those riots the ghosts had been talking about had still happened, and the whole _world_ was destroyed!? And the air pollution was so bad they had to hide in the school with an air purifier on, or they’d all _die?_ If this wasn’t his own handwriting, he’d have thought it was a joke! Why hadn’t getting rid of that ghost worked like the others thought it would have?

Oh wait, that was in here as well… The exorcism had only kicked the ghost outta Sayaka’s head, not got rid of it completely. And when he’d tried to ask her about who the ghost was, she had no memory of ghosts whatsoever!

Then he’d been cornered by Junko, who’d told him _she_ was the ghost… or at least, the body the ghost was currently using to carry out his plans… apparently he’d promised her that he’d get her and her sister (who could sense ghosts, just not as well as _him)_ out of this alive if they co-operated with him, and she’d believed it… and it seemed that since then he’d been gradually messing with her mind ever since.

That was when he was given ‘special rules’ 1(Don't talk about or protect anyone else from ghosts) and 2 (Don’t draw attention to Junko’s weird behaviour), and told that if he broke them, it’d either be bye-bye air purifier, or he’d possess a random friend of his and have them go on a killing spree...

What was he supposed to do about that? This ghost seemed to be invisible to his ability to see the ghosts around him, so he couldn’t tell who or where it even _was!_ No wondered he’d let this all happen, it’s not like there was any way he could fight _back_ against a guy that powerful!

So, that answered most of his questions but one: what the hell was with this bear thing? Still, he was only about three quarters of the way through skimming the notebook…

… What? This was _crazy!_ The ghost could _erase memories?_ And he’d erased the memories of everyone else in the whole class, so no one knew they were all friends anymore? And then that ‘Monokuma’ had woken them all up, told them they were trapped in the school (but not the whole ‘end of the world’ bit) and said they could get out if they got away with murdering someone… and Hiro couldn’t tell them anything about it, because ‘special rule number 3’ was ‘don’t tell anyone about their missing memories’!

So he’d just had to stand around uselessly, while all his friends panicked and killed each other, and even Mukuro got killed (Who was disguised as Junko, so no one but him knew the real one was running around behind the scenes), by the bear itself! So, so much for that promise to keep her and Junko alive! And apparently that stupid bear had spent half the time laughing at him for not being able to do anything about it, and saying that he couldn’t wait until the ‘saved’ version of himself finished skipping forward through time and learnt that all the time travel his friends had gone through still hadn’t done anything to change things…

_“Ahahahahah!_ That’s _just_ the expression I was expecting!” 'Monokuma' had managed to pop into the room without him noticing again. “Anyway, all your buddies are meeting downstairs to discuss the exploration! And you’ve gotta pretend you don’t trust Togami or Fukawa!”

…Oh boy… this was going to be a disaster…

…

…

…

That… was less of a disaster than he’d expected. If only he’d been able to tell Sakura he trusted her, instead of following Monokuma’s order to smash a bottle over her head and try to frame Toko for the ‘murder’… It was pretty depressing how willingly his friends had believed he was a total idiot though…

But now everyone was cheering the death of Junko, and he had to play along with it, because he had absolutely no idea who or where the _real_ mastermind behind this ‘Ultimate despair’ was… All he could do was wait for Makoto to open the door and pray that things weren’t really as bad as he’d written, or that someone had fixed it partially, or that there was even a way _to_ fix all of this…

“Here goes...!” Makoto cried and pushed the escape button, causing the doors to slowly creep open, to reveal the dark smoky air of the outside world.

The room they were gradually started to fill with coughs and splutters…

“Are… are we even going to be able to survive out there?” Hina asked.

“We… we have to try! Maybe there’s a safe place somewhere… or it’ll be better on higher ground!” Makoto suggested.

“Either way, with the air purifier being turned off, we can’t stay here!” Kyoko agreed, and they quickly made their way out of the building…

“Ah… the door opened!”

“And Hagakure’s there!”

“HELLO!”

“OI! HAGAGKURE! OVER HERE!”

It was the group of ghosts who’d save him, apparently stuck just outside the school building… he couldn’t just leave them there, could he?

“Why are you stopping, you idiot?” Togami was scowling at him, “We need to _move!”_

“Uhh…. Just lemme bless our friends first!” He came up with something suitably stupid sounding and rushed over to the ghosts.

“H-hagakure! Wh-what’s going _on!?”_ Taka started babbling at him in tears, “What happened? Why did nothing change? You weren’t supposed to be helping him anymore! Why did this all still happen? Why aren’t we…”

“I can’t talk now! I’ll explain later, alright? Just… get on me so we can try and find somewhere with clean air!” He muttered quietly, while pretending to pray and hoping that wherever the ghost _was,_ it wouldn’t figure out that he was giving a ride to the other ghosts who’d been trying to stop him.

They did as he said, and he rushed back over to the group, to see what happened to them all next…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for continuing to read! I sort of realised my foreshadowing of Mukuro's ghost sensing ability didn't work that well, given I also established that the mastermind ghost is immune to it. Whoops!  
> Also, this chapter is currently the end of my buffer, but I should have plenty time to write more Friday morning and Saturday, so hopefully the schedule won't slip! (Some chapters got written out of order, so if I write just one more I'll have enough chapters for another week and a half, and I only have four chapters left to write before I have the whole story finished... but I'm still going to only post two chapters a week because I'm eeeevvvviiiilllll...)


	21. (Mondo POV)

“We’ve been dead for three months.” Taka announced one day, staring at the calendar blankly, “Not counting the time we spent... _before_ coming here…”

 _Here_ was Hagakure’s room in the headquarters of Future Foundation, where the fortune teller had off-loaded them after he and the other survivors from their class had been picked up by a helicopter a few minutes after they’d escaped the school.

The first thing he’d done after _that_ was hurriedly put up a load of his bullshit-looking (but apparently effective) wards around the room and then went on to tell them exactly how bad they’d all fucked up!

They shoulda known it wouldn’t have been that easy… shoulda thought to try and stick around and see what was actually happening, instead of just skipping back forwards to what they thought was going to be a great big happy ending where they were all alive again and he got to work out with Chi and hang with his friends and kiss Taka…

But no, all that back and forth through time and all they’d done was swap being stuck in the cold room to being stuck in _Hagakure’s_ room, all too worried about getting caught by this all-powerful ghost who’d caused this whole problem in the first place! And their only hope, and it was a fucking _tiny_ hope at that, of being able to get out was that fucking _Hagakure_ of all people would be able to figure out who this ‘mastermind’ ghost was and how to fucking _stop_ him!

But, as Taka had just pointed out, it had been three months, and the guy still had no clues… and even if he _did,_ what good would it do? They’d missed the chance to go back and stop any of their own deaths, and Kamila’s body was gone to… every chance they’d had was gone now…

“…Before I ruined _everything…”_ Taka continued.

Mondo didn’t know what was worse… knowing he’d probably be stuck as a ghost forever, or watching Taka beat himself up, because he thought it was all _his_ fault…

“Hey, c’mon! We _all_ decided to come back here…” Mondo told him, although this must have been the hundredth time he’d said it.

“But… it was _me_ who brought us back! And… it was _me_ who didn’t stop to think about what I was doing… I just going forward with it all as fast as I could, without _once_ thinking that I might be making everything _worse!_ ” He cried, his eye starting to glow slightly… “I mean, how could I have been so _stupid!?_ I had all those chances! But I just ploughed ahead with what _I_ wanted and…”

“Taka, _C’mon!_ Stop this… _please!”_ Mondo grabbed him at him for a hug… well, kinda… I wasn’t exactly the same feeling, when they were both dead… “Look… we _told_ ya… it wasn’t _just_ you, we _all_ thought we were doing the right thing! So… why’d you keep acting like _you_ were the only one there? Like it’s all on _you,_ and not Sissel or _Jowd!”_

“You know, we _can_ hear you over there…” The ghost cat stirred from napping around his owners feet over at the other end of the room.

“I… I always thought _I’d_ fix everything, because _I_ was the one who always made an effort…” Taka started answering his question, before Mondo got a chance to retort. “I thought if I just worked hard enough, sacrificed enough time… I’d rise to power, be respected… restore my family’s name… get us out of debt… all our problems, _gone forever!_ I’d have been my family’s _hero!_ ” He sighed, “So then I find out there’s more problems… the entire world destroyed! So why not sacrifice a little more to fix it, just like I was going to fix everything _else_ …”

“Taka…?”  Was he crying?

“…I was so arrogant. It never even occurred to me that I might _not_ be able to fix things… or how it would affect you!” Oh crap… he really _was_ crying now _…_ “And now we’re _stuck_ like this! _Forever!”_ He sobbed, “I… I promised I’d save you, but in the end, I didn’t do _anything_ to help! I had the perfect chance to save you and the only think I changed is that now Ikusaba and Enoshima are dead as well! Mondo… I… I’m _so_ _sorry…!”_

“I ain’t.” Mondo told him.

“Wh-what?” Taka’s breath hitched between sobs, “Y-you’re not, what?”

“I’m not sorry… Alright, so, looking back on it, we made the wrong decision…” Mondo admitted, “But you were right. We were trying to save the whole world. It was worth the risk! I mean… Daiya gave his life ta save mine… so it’s not like I couldn’t have at least _tried_ ta save everyone else! That’s be like saying my life by itself was worth more than _his…_ which it _ain’t!_ ”

“… _I_ think it is.” Taka sniffed.

“Thanks…” Mondo blushed, “Ya _wrong…_ but thanks…”

“I am _not_ wrong!” Taka snapped, “And I’ll convince you of that if it takes me _forever!”_

“Well… now’s ya chance… ‘cause we’ve _got_ forever… together.” Mondo reminded him, “’Cause I ain’t letting ya go anywhere by yourself, ever again...”

“…Thank you.” Taka sniffed, as Mondo put his arms around him…

It’d almost be worth failing to save the world, if he coulda actually _felt_ Taka there…

“Hey guys!” Taka bolted out of Mondo’s arm, as _fricken Hagakure_ decided to come back to his room and completely ruin the moment… “Uhh… Is this a bad time?”

“N-no! Of course not!” Taka lied, trying to wipe up his tears, “Have you had any contact from the ghost? Or leads on him?”

“No, and uhh… maybe? Well, not exactly…” Hagakure muttered, “I dunno if it’s the _ghost,_ but _somethings_ up with some of the other survivors that they ain’t telling me about…”

“What do you mean by _something?”_ Jowd jumped across the items in the room to join the conversation.

“It’s Makoto, Kyoko and Togami… I started noticing they’ve been a bit… distant the last few weeks so I started tailing them and… well, they’re planning _something_ together!” Hagakure started. “But I dunno if it’s because of the ghost or something _else…”_

“Couldn’t you just _ask_ them?” Taka asked.

“I have done, but I don’t think they trust _me_ enough to let them in on it!” Hagakure huffed, “They all think I’m some stupid occult nut!”

Mondo didn’t point out that that could be because he _was…_

“Well… why not prove you _aren’t!?”_ Taka suggested, “Show them _us!”_

“But, what if we try that, and it turns out the ghost is possessing one of _them?_ ” Jowd asked, “Then he’d know exactly where we are and we’d lose what little advantage we _have!”_

“Well, what if Hagakure does his weird word, circle thing again first?” Mondo suggested.

“It’s called an _exorcism,_ Mondo!” Hagakure rolled his eyes. “But… I dunno for sure if it actually works or not… it might have just been that the ghost decided to ditch Sayaka once she wasn’t going to be useful anymore and let me _think_ I’d done it!”

“Well, then it seems you’ll have to watch them all a while longer.” Sissel suggested.

“Uhh… I dunno if I _can_ … whatever it is they’re doing, I think they’re doing it _soon…_ maybe even _today…_

“ _Today!?_ Seriously!? Why the fuck didn’t ya tell us this earlier!?” Mondo snapped at him.

“I didn’t wanna get your hopes up!” Hagakure waved his hands apologetically.

“So, we need to decide if we’re going to take a risk to try and make everything better, or sit for a while…” Jowd summarised, to which the group all sighed…

All except for one voice…

“We need to make things better!” Missile insisted.

“But… if we’re not careful, we might make things even _worse_ … again…” Taka hung his head…

“But everything’s getting worse anyway! That’s what the shiny box said, wasn’t it?”

“Nurghh…” Taka hesitated… His eyes looked... they looked like they might be _hopeful_ , somewhere under all that fear…

“...It could be a chance to find out who he is… and do it _right_ this time.” Jowd mused.

“But… but _still!_ If he _catches_ us…! _”_

“How bad could it _be!?”_ Mondo snapped, “At least we’ll have fucking _tried,_ instead of just moping about in this stupid room for another three months while those… all those _ordinary people_ all work together to fuckin’ _break_ everything, while _we_ all sit around doing _fuck all!_ ”

“It’s always darkest before dawn, right?” Sissel added. “And, face it kid, we probably can’t make it any _worse!”_

“…Soo… should I try and talk to one of them?” Hagakure asked.

“Alright…” Taka nodded.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	22. (Present Makoto Ver. 3 POV)

Makoto quickly finished his work and logged out of the computer… he’d organised the ‘cargo’ to be delivered onto the boat to Jabberwock Island… now he just had to get on it himself before anyone caught him and… what was this weird circle on the floor?

_“Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus, omnis satanica potestas, omnis incursio infernalis adversarii, omnis legio, et secta diabolica!”_

“…Hi, Hagakure.” Makoto sighed once the fortune teller stopped yelling crazy words at him…

Really, the guy had had gone completely wacko… thinking back on it, it seemed like it’d happened right after Celestia’s trial, at least, that was when he’d seemed to have suddenly become a lot stupider… Although it wasn’t until they’d all got out of the school and he’d suddenly insisted on ‘blessing’ the place that he’d gone completely bizarre… To the point where they’d all decided not to tell him about the plan to try to rehabilitate the despairs…

But now he seemed to be tailing everyone involved with it… had he figured out what they were up to? Kirigiri didn’t seem to think so, but she also didn’t want to involve anyone other than herself and Togami if they could help it.

“Hey! Naegi! Glad to see it’s just you!” Hagakure grinned once his little… spell, or whatever he thought it was, was finished. “You guys found out any more info on who’s caused all this Tragedy business?”

“Uhh… no! No luck there! Ahaha…” Makoto laughed weakly. It was getting kind of hard to keep lying to him, especially when they were so close to making a breakthrough with the despair remnants…

“You _sure…?_ ‘Cause you kinda seem to be being _really_ sneaky recently…” Hagakure commented.

“Me? Sneaky?” Makoto’s voice raised an octave without him wanting it to, “Why would I be sneaky?”

“Hmm… I guess you might not realise what’s going on…” Hagakure muttered. “Tell you what, seeing as it’s just you, why don’t you come to my room and I’ll show you something cool!”

“Uhh… Well…” He didn’t have time for this! But if he didn’t humour the guy, Hagakure might blab about his behaviour to someone like Munakata… “Sure! Not like I’m up to anything important!” He laughed.

“Great!” Hagakure cheered, and they headed into his room, which was festooned with all sorts of weird charms…

“Ok, guys? This is _just_ Neagi!” Hagakure announced to… absolutely no one. Oh, geez, he really _had_ lost it, hadn’t he? “Now if you could all show him I'm _no_ crazy...”

“Uhh… Hagakure? Are you feeling…? Uhh…” Makoto started to ask… before noticing that two of the cards on Hagakure’s table kept… changing design? Like they were switching places without moving…

“Oh, that’s Missile!” Hagakure laughed, “He can swap things!” He added, as a crystal ball suddenly rolled towards the edge of the table… “Hey! Sissel! I told you not to mess about with that! It’s worth a million dollars!” Hagakure snapped as he caught it and patted it protectively…

At which point it suddenly cracked…

“Oowada… _dude!_ That’s _not funny!”_ Hagakure sighed.

“Wait… _Oowada!?”_ Makoto cried, “You’re saying _Oowada’s_ here!? But he was _executed!_ ”

“Yeah, I know… but he’s a ghost! Him and Ishimaru!” Hagakure shrugged, “But Ishi can’t show himself… No! No he _can’t!”_ He added, like he was responding to someone else…

What the heck _was_ this? Was this some crazy prank? Or was Hagakure serious and he could actually see the ghosts of their friends…? This was too much for Makoto… his head was going all fuzzy, like he was about to faint…

He didn’t though, instead he walked over to Hagakure’s desk, picked up a pen and started writing, without actually meaning to…

‘ _Hi! My name’s Kamila! I was a student at Hope’s Peak! I was experimenting with a rock that turns people into ghosts, and gives them powers! That’s what happened to me, Ishimaru, Oowada and my two pets! We all have different powers, mine is that I possess people. Sorry!’_

_‘But there’s also another ghost around! We don’t know who it is, but they’re the one who caused the tragedy. Do you have any idea who they are?’_

Suddenly, Makoto felt like he wasn’t going to faint anymore… or perhaps he’d never needed to, he’d just felt like it because he was possessed by this Kamila person?

He considered his options… Either Hagakure and this ‘Kamila’ were telling the truth, and Ultimate Despair was a _ghost,_ and these _other_ ghosts could use Makoto’s help _…_ or Hagakure was such a genius that he’d managed to make Makoto’s body move on its own, in which case, if he _was_ evil, the world was probably screwed even if Makoto _didn’t_ tell him everything he knew…

“Alright… I don’t know exactly who it could be, I’m guessing it’s _not_ Enoshima?” He guessed, and Hagakure shook his head… yeah, that would have been too easy… “But… we captured some of Enoshima’s helpers… the ones being called the remnants of despair? _They_ might know?” Makoto suggested.

“Hmm… what do you think, guys?” Hagakure asked the air, and seemed to be listening to the responses… “Yeah, they wanna know if they can talk to these remnants?”

“They’re all unconscious at the moment…” Makoto told him.

“Hmm... That might not be a problem! If any of them have ever died, then they’ll be able to talk to their spirits, even if they _aren’t_ awake!”

…What the heck made Hagakure think some of them might have _ever_ _died?_

 _…_ Well…. Probably the same thing that made him think Ishimaru and Oowada were ghosts… This ‘rock’ of ‘Kamila’s’…

…Man, Kirigiri and Togami were going to be _so_ pissed off with Makoto if he was wrong about this…

“Alright… I guess you guys can come with me when I go to the island with them all…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for continuing to read!


	23. (Hajime POV)

“Ahh… this was such a _good_ body… _” Urgh!_ What was Kamukura doing backing in his body? It was unconscious, on what Hajime could only assume was a boat. If Kamukura did anything at all with it _now_ he’d get caught out…

“Hmm? You wonder why I’m here? I just thought I’d have last visit before I switch to a new host. You probably wouldn’t understand… I’ve been fulfilling my dream of having the _Ultimate_ body for the last three years, and now I have to give it up... How _despairing…_ ”

 _Urg…_ Hajime was starting to get _real_ sick of hearing about despair from this guy… “Try having it for one minute, and then having to watch someone _else_ take it over for…”

“Yes, yes… Your despair was fun at first, but it’s just as boring as everything else, now.” Kamukura shut him down, “At least there’s a _halfway_ decent body on board… that Togami lad is well respected…” Kamukura carried on his monologue…

Hajime couldn’t wait to get rid of him…

“Yes… the Togami lad it will be, until you free yourself from Future Foundation, of course!” He could practically _feel_ the smirk on the old ghost’s face, before he finally left…

 _Finally!_ Some peace and quiet! If only he was awake to enjoy it… But Hajime was never going to wake up and move by himself for more than a minute, was he?

If only he’d never agreed to take part in that project! Or if only he’d _actually_ died during the operation, instead having this ghost go back in time to rescue him… because he’d decided to take over Hajime’s new, talent filled body once he’d finally ‘tricked’ the operation into being a success…

Hajime had had one, maybe _two_ minutes tops to enjoy the results of the operation, before Izuru Kamukura’s spirit had taken it over… and had been having to listen to the old ghost’s gloomy monologues about how dull and boring the world was, even as he completely destroyed it, ever since.

The only breaks from it Hajime had had were times where Kamukura used his ghost tricks to completely trap his body, (albeit, with IV drips to make sure he didn’t dehydrate to death) and gone off to… well, carry out his crazy plan to destroy the world, Hajime guessed. He’d given up on trying to understand his possessor a year ago. Now he was just resigned to enjoying the brief moments of silence when they happened…

“Look! This squid-haired boy has a core!”

 _What was that?_ It sounded like a _dog?_ A talking dog? Maybe Hajime had gone crazy?

“ _Wonderful!_ We should be able to talk to him then! It really _was_ worth the risk of sneaking onto the boat!” And… _that_ sounded like… it couldn’t be… _The Ultimate Moral Compass?_ But hadn’t Kamukura been gloating that he _killed_ him? And most of the other Ultimates…

“Hello? Are you awake in here?” Another new voice… this time accompanied by the form of a young woman he recognised instantly as the Ultimate Physicist… along with that of the Moral Compass he heard earlier, the Ultimate Gang Leader and, for some reason, a cat and dog…

“I… yes?” Hajime answered, unsure as to what exactly counted as ‘awake’.

“Uhh… Why’d ya look different to your body?” The gang leader asked him… It was a fair question. The surgery had changed his appearance, but his spirit still kept the form of talentless Hajime Hinata…

“I… I volunteered up to take part in a project. I was told they had a surgery that would be able to give me the talents of all of the Ultimates in Hope’s Peak…” He told them

“And you _believed_ them!?” The Moral Compass scoffed at him. “You really thought you be able to achieve all _that_ with no effort on your part whatsoever!?”

“They… they said my personality might change. But… I decided I’d rather someone else with talent, than me without.” Hajime told them.

“ _Why!?_ Talent’s nothing special!” Ishimaru cried.

“Easy for you say, when you _have_ it.”

“I’m _not_ talented! I got where I am through hard work and sheer force of will!”

“Then you have a talent for hard work and…”

“Hey! Is this actually relevant?” The cat asked, to which Ishimaru cringed and kept quiet… geez, it came to something when the voice of reason was a friggen _cat!_ “So, what happened after that?”

“The surgery was successful. I woke up with a new body that was capable of anything I put my mind to.” Hajime smiled, remembering those that short minute of _talent…_ but then he remembered what happened next and the memory turned sour, as it always did. “But it didn’t last. That’s when Izuru took over…”

“But… aren’t _you_ Izuru?” The physicist asked, “That’s what Naegi told us…”

“That’s just what they called me after they gave me my talents.” Hajime explained, “The project was named after the founder of Hope’s Peak…”

“Izuru Kamukura…” The world’s most diligent hall monitor obviously knew _that_ bit of trivia. “He died over 200 years ago…”

“And he’s been trying to make himself a new body ever since.” Hajime told them, “One with every talent of every student in Hope’s Peak…”

“Eh? How can he do that when he’s _dead?”_ The gang leader asked.

“He must have died near Temsik…” The moral compass muttered, _“He’s_ the ghost who’s been possessing everyone and caused the Tragedy!”

“He’s not just a possessor though… he can go backwards through time, manipulate items, make things fly through the air, hide from people who can detect ghosts …” Hajime listed off the tricks he’d seen his possessor use… “He can even erase memories…”

“So ’Ultimate despair’ is a _200-year-old human._ ” The cat commented, “It makes sense, Yomiel broke down enough in just _ten…_ ”

“Who gives a fuck about his mental state?” The gang leader growled, “Does this guy have any _weaknesses!?”_

“I… don’t know if it’s a weakness, exactly…” Hajime warned them, “But he’s really protective of his _body_ …”

“You mean he buried his bones?” Typical for a dog to think of it like that.

“No… his body hasn’t decayed.” Hajime corrected him, “I think it must be embalmed or something… it still looks like a fresh corpse… at least it did when I last saw it.”

“...Like _me_ , right!?” The physicist grinned… “He must still have a Temsik shard in him!”

“Which means if we find his body and take _out_ the Temsik shard, we should be able to go back and save him, and stop this whole mess from ever happening!” The cat agreed. “Like we did with Yomiel!”

“We… we _can!?_ Really…?” The moral compass looked like he was going to cry, “We… we’ll finally be alive again…?”

“Hell yes!” The gang leader told him, “Just as soon as we get to that body!”

“You… what are you all talking about? You can… stop Kamukura?” Hajime asked them… after so long trapped by him, it seemed too good to be true, that he’d be able to have his talented body all to himself...

“Yes! We just need to go back in time, and stop him from becoming a ghost!” The physicist smiled, “So, where _is_ his body!?”

“Wait… You’re going back in _time…_ So he’ll have _never_ been a ghost?” Hajime confirmed, to which the nodded. “So… he’ll have never organised the Izuru Kamukura project? I’ll have never had talent…”

 _Of course_ it was too good to be true. All he had was a choice… go back to being ordinary, talentless Hajime Hinata… or live with no control over his body…

“Ah! But… talent is _meaningless!_ Err… Have you ever heard of Toranosuke Ishimaru…?”

“Your grandfather? Yes…” Most reserve course students knew a _lot_ about the Ultimates…

“Well…. _See!_ All that talent and he still ended up dying in shame!” Ishimaru carried on… “So… so there’s no point withholding information from us!”

He had a point… what was the point of talent if it did _him_ no good… but then, he was just saying that because he wanted to be alive again… He didn’t really care what _Hajime_ wanted… The only Ultimate who’d ever cared about _that…_

What would _she_ have wanted…?

She’d have probably wanted him to wake up… so they could play videogames together… Even if he wasn’t very good at it…

“Alright… I’ll tell you where it is…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really hope this all makes sense...
> 
> Thanks for continuing to read!


	24. (Togami POV)

“You really think we can trust Hagakure?” Togami asked Kirigiri from behind the controls of the boat, a while after Naegi had taken the babbling fortune teller down below decks to look at the remnants.

“I don’t think he has it in him to betray anyone…” She replied.

“I’m not talking about his _loyalty_ , I’m more concerned with his _competency!”_ Togami pointed out, “Did Naegi even tell _you_ why he brought him aboard?”

“No… I just trusted that it’s for a good reason…” She admitted.

“Well, for all our sakes, it had _better_ be…” Togami muttered, noticing that Hagakure and Naegi were suddenly getting incredibly animated about something, despite the fact that all they’d been doing down there was staring at the unconscious Kamukura…

It _far_ too soon before the pair of them rushed back above deck and barged into the control room…

“Togami! Umm… can we change course?” Naegi at least had the decency to be embarrassed about the foolish request.

“Do you have _any_ idea how difficult it was to plot a route that would let us travel unnoticed by Munakata’s troops…?”

It was ridiculous, really, the way he’d been so intent on merely _destroying_ the remnants… as if killing _any_ problematic leader or figurehead without dealing with the underlying problems causing their citizens to have followed them in the first place ever worked! Whereas if they could use the Neo World Program to _rewrite_ despair… and to do so on the very leaders and figureheads the masses were following…!

That was why… “We can’t just reroute everything because of whatever insane idea _he_ has come up with!”

“Hey! It’s not insane!” Hagakure snapped. “We just need to stop by Izuru Kamukura’s body so Ishimaru and the others can go back in time 200 years, stop him getting hit by Temsik and make it so his ghost never causes this whole Tragedy thing in the first place!”

… _That_ was what they wanted to do!? Of all the stupid things for the fortune teller to come out…!

“Uhh…Hiro, when you say it like that, it _does_ sound completely insane…”

_“How_ do _you_ know about _Temsik!?”_ Togami demanded, “It’s classified information!”

“Well, Jowd told me about it!” Hagakure said, far too casually before looking off to the side stupidly… “She wants to know how _you_ know about it…”

“…Are you saying you can _see_ her?” Kirigiri asked.

“Yep! I can see ghosts! Well… most of them anyway…” Hagakure frowned.

“I pretty sure he’s telling the truth…” Naegi told them, “I’ve seen the ghosts do things that shouldn’t be possible… But… how _do_ you know about it?”

“I told you this already, I’m a Togami, I have access to information that ordinary people have no clue about…”

And, of course, he’d been warned about the existence of ghosts… especially after the situation where one of them had possessed the Justice Minister and forced him to sign an execution order… He’d know what to expect if a ghost attempted to possess _him!_

“…Although, I will admit, I was not aware that Hope’s Peaks’ founder is a ghost now!” He admitted, “Where is this corpse of his?” He moved his hands down to the controls, to start rerouting their destination…

Or… he _tried_ to… his hands weren’t moving the way he wanted to… and he was starting to feel his mind fill with _fog…_

This ghost had the _nerve_ to possess _him!?_ How _dare_ he!? He’d make Kamukura rue the day he choose _Byakuya Togami_ as a _host!_  

“Here! Lemme put it in!” Hagakure obliviously leant over to type in the co-ordinates, and that was when Togami felt his arm swing out…

Despite his own insistence that his body was _not_ going to punch Hagakure in the face, his arm still struck the fortune teller hard enough to send stinging pain shooting up Togami’s arm and cause the other man to collapse to the floor.

“Wha…? _Togami!?_ Why did you…!?” Naegi obviously hadn’t grasped the situation yet…

“Get away from him!” Kirigiri was much quicker on the uptake, as usual, and started dragging the luckster out of the control cabin…

Despite Togami’s best intentions, his body stood up and, ignoring the sudden, temporary feeling that his shoes weren’t on the right way around, stiffly walked towards the door the pair of them had just left open…

Which slammed shut in his face, filling his sight with flashes of colour that the ghost controlling him seemed unaware of, as his hand reached out and touched the door, somehow making it fly open again, despite Togami not having touched the doorknob… So, they ghost could ‘Trick’ items he touched, then? He wondered if Kirigiri was aware of that…

He only briefly saw her staring at him through the now-open door, before it spontaneously slammed shut again. This time his body punched the door, somehow causing it to first buckle violently away from him, and then shatter into pieces on the second hit…

Kirigiri and Naegi were already on the move away from him, apparently deciding to try and hide up in the control booth for the large crane that they had used to move the Neo World equipment onto the boat…

That wouldn't stop Togami’s body at this rate, as it strode across the deck with little trouble, despite Togami’s insistence that it _stop moving right now!_ In fact, it seemed to be getting _better_ at controlling him! When the floor of the deck suddenly imploded under his feet, the ghost was still able force him to jump to the side and hold onto the railing at the side of the ship, which remained intact.

Hmm… Whichever ghost was breaking things obviously wasn’t planning to risk Togami’s life, if they weren’t doing anything to the railing… but then Hagakure _had_ mentioned the hall monitor, hadn’t he? Of course _that_ idiot would refuse to get rid of Togami, even though he’d become such on damaging liability to the Future Foundation!

Luckily, up in the control booth for the crane, Kirigiri was _not_ being foolish! He could see the look of grim determination on her face as the crane dropped down and swung straight at him.

He mentally steeled himself for the hit… and _now_ his body followed suit! _The ghost had jumped out him! They were about to throw him off the ship for no reason!_

_…_ Or they _would_ have, if Naegi hadn’t lunged for the controls at the last second, causing the crane to rip off the portion of railing _next_ to him instead, and send it crashing into the sea below.

And then, as if for good measure (or to protect him? Who knew how Ishimaru’s thought processes worked) the entire crane swung sideways and followed it.

The three of them all looked at each other…

"I take it the ghost tried to ditch you?" Kirigiri asked him.

"Of  _course_ it did! I was obviously proving to be  _far_ too difficult a host for it to attempt to go swimming with!" Togami told her.

“…Is that it then?” Naegi was first to speak.

“It could possess a fish and come back…” Togami pointed out.

“Are there any _left?”_ Kirigiri asked.

“… I don’t know. But I’d rather not stick around and find out. Naegi, wake up Hagakure and get those new co-ordinates put in…”

 

The co-ordinates turned out to lead to a hidden rocky inlet, that none of the map systems had any data on whatsoever, despite it being almost practically next to the former site of Hope’s Peak. A brief glance revealed that there was nothing of note within in… at least as far as _he_ could see _…_

“Uhh… The ghosts say he’s buried under the rocks…” Hagakure explained, “And they say they’re going to swap out the Temsik fragment for another rock nearby and then go back in time…”

“Umm… okay?” Naegi said, as a small pebble by his feet suddenly turned bright green, “GOOD LUCK GUYS!”

“They say thanks!” Hagakure told him, “And… they’ve gone! You think they’ll manage it?” 

“It’s an interesting question… after all, how would _we_ know?” Kirigiri started.

“If it works, we won’t have any memory of having tried it…” She and Naegi both finished, almost completely in synch..

“…How did you know I was going to say that?” She asked him, suspiciously.

“You’ve said it to me before, haven’t you?” Naegi asked her, looking slightly confused.

_“When!?”_ She asked.

“Uhh…?” Naegi obviously had no idea.

“This is pointless, even if they _do_ change the timeline, _we_ still live in _this_ one!” Togami pointed out, picking up the piece of the meteorite the ghosts had been considerate enough to leave them. “And _we_ have some remnants of despair to re…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's kind of a hint at the end of Ghost Trick that Lynne has a vague memory of what happened during the game, so I thought it was fair for Makoto to have something similar... (Plus also I wanted to shift things in favour of the timeline being re-written, not just leaving a split timeline where the depressing stuff still happens.)
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	25. (Izuru (Founder) POV)

Izuru looked up at the tall, iron gates, guarding the entrance to the large brick buildings he’d worked so hard to build. This was it, his life’s work. The most important thing he’d ever do… the _last_ important thing he’d ever do, given his aging body was failing him…

Hope’s Peak! A school designed to bring together the most talented and hopeful students in the world, so they could all grow together and improve their wonderful abilities, even more so than they could by themselves… Or that was the idea he’d had, when he’d first started this project, so many years ago…

Such a shame it had taken him so long to do… He’d barely get to see any of the fruits of his labour, or to see if his plans worked. Would the children who got to go to his school be grateful for the chance? Or would they just assume they _deserved_ it somehow, for being _better_ than everyone else, like every other talented person he’d ever met! Honestly, to be given something so wondrous and unique, only for most of them to have no idea that it needed to be nurtured and grown…

If only _he’d_ been given talent, or there was some way to _take_ talent from ungrateful idiots who wasted it! _He’d_ have made proper use of it! _He’d_ have made sure to cultivate his talent… or _talents!_ Who was to say one couldn’t have more than _one_ talent, if one was going to claim it from others? Enough talents, and one could almost become a perfect being, even!

Now _that_ would have been a life work he would have been _sure_ to be proud of, not this empty building, soon to be full of the first round of students who didn’t understand how _gifted_ they were, and would have to be _goaded_ into improving themselves…

If _only_ he’d worked on some way of researching how to _get_ talents, instead of just aiming to _grow_ it in others… _If only he could find a way to get the time and ability to become that perfect being…_

It was at that moment, almost out of the corner of his eye, that the sky flashed an unearthly neon blue and his gaze was draw inexplicably upwards, towards a comet streaking its way across the sky…

No… not a comet, it was too close to the earth to be a comet… A meteorite, then! A meteorite that appeared just as he was longing for a chance to complete a more _meaningful_ life’s work! Almost like a shooting star had appeared to be wished upon… Only one that was actually going to _land_ within his school…

An image flashed through his mind, like a portent of the future, of himself stood on the edge of the courtyard fountain, ready to accept his new destiny as the meteorite flew inevitably towards him…

He started to run, along the paths he’d carefully mapped out years ago, past the buildings he’d watching slowly growing larger and larger each year put together over the years, through the school he couldn’t have given a _damn_ about anymore… Because he was going to have a _new_ legacy, once he reached that _rock!_ And _nothing_ was going to stop him!

 _“SQARRAAACCKK!”_ What in god’s name was _that!?_

The answer literally hit him in the face, as an angry looking seagull suddenly flew into him. It even tried to circle around to attack him again, only to get knocked aside in his anger… stupid bird! How _dare_ it try to keep him from his destiny!

No matter, he still had time, so long as he ran and had no more interupti… _ARGH!_ His _feet!_ Why did his shoes suddenly not fit correctly!? Well… nevermind! He’d just have to endure it for a short while! After all, the fountain was in his sight! He just had to run down the tree-lined path and he’d be _there!_

… So why was his body not moving? Why did his head feel thick and slow to think? Why was he starting to turn around and walk in the _wrong_ direction?

…Something was _controlling_ him!? NO! He couldn’t let it ruin this chance! He had to fight it! _He had to turn around NOW!_

 _Finally,_ his body began to listen to him… but not before several of the trees lining the path suddenly began to inexplicably topple over, forcing him to slow down to climb over them all on… but it didn’t matter! He was _still_ there in time, still managed to climb up onto the ridge of the fountain and turn to face his _destiny…_

Only for a sudden blast of ice cold water to strike him from behind and send him toppling forwards into the dirt, causing the meteorite to sail over his head and smash into the traitorous fountain itself…

Was that it then? Had the _fountain_ somehow stolen his destiny?

Ah… but the _rock_ was still there, glowing amongst the rubble of the ruined fountain… He might not have been _hit_ by it, like he _should_ have been… but it was still _there!_ And just from _looking_ at it, he could tell that just _possessing_ it would drastically alter his destiny… all he had to do was move forward and _take_ it!

 _*krck… krccck…*_ What… what was that _noise?_ It was coming from the _rock…_ as if something was _chipping away_ at it…

 _NO!_ He had to take it before that happened! He lunged towards it…

 ** _*CRRRAAACKK!_** ** _*_** And the rock let out a thunderous noise and blinding blue light, as it shattered into tiny fragments, small enough to be scattered away by wind…

…And that was it… his chance to change his destiny gone… no, not just gone, _stolen!_ Cruelly snatched away when he was _so close_ to it! And he had no idea by _who_ or _how_ it had been done, but he’d dedicate the _rest_ of his _life_ to finding out, if only to force them to get a taste of the _despair_ they’d forced on _him…!_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for continuing to read!


	26. (Kiyo POV)

“Jesus _fuck,_ we almost killed him anyway!” Mondo yelled, after the blinding light emitted by the meteorite the pair of them had just destroyed faded.

“But we _didn’t!_ That’s it… it’s _done_! No more ‘Ultimate Despair’!” Sissel purred.

“Yeah! We _did_ it! Now _everyone’s_ gonna be safe! And _we’ll_ be alive!” Mondo cheered, pulling Ishimaru in close for a sideways hug.

“I _knew_ it! I _knew_ there’d be a way to help!” Kamila exclaimed.

“And now it’ll be _easy_ to find Miss Lynne and Mr Jowd and everyone else!” Missile barked.

“We… we’ve really done it…” Ishimaru could barely believe it… after the months they’d spent hopelessly in the future foundation… “We really managed to fix everything…”

“Yeah… we did…” Mondo agreed, “We’re heroes…”

“But… no one will remember…” Ishimaru sighed. Not that it was important… but it would have been nice to have _some_ recognition for it… some minor _reward…_

“ _I’ll_ remember.” Mondo promised him, “And remember what we promised? About when we were next alive?”

Well… that _would_ be a reward, he supposed… and it was funny how he could still _blush,_ even though he was a _ghost…_

“We should try to meet up with each other, once we go back to the present! The new present, that is!” Kamila suggested. “Assuming we aren’t all at school together anyway…”

“Yes! Absolutely!” Ishimaru promised her. “If we’re not in the school, then I’ll make sure to find out where you both live as soon as possible!”

“Well… you oughta know where _I_ live… we’ll have been friends, remember?” Mondo pointed out.

“Ah! Yes! Of course! I’d have your address in my diary!” Ishimaru laughed. “So… shall we head back to our time, then?” He asked…

“Yes! Back to the _nice_ future!” Missile barked, “And we’ll all meet up and play together!”

“Fuck yeah! It’s a promise!” Mondo agreed.

“See you soon… but try not to kill yourselves this time…” Sissle sounded as if he was smirking at them.

“I assure it, it won’t even cross my mind!” Ishimaru promised, as he undid the time warp…

And then he was sat at a desk, a sheet of complicated maths problems in front of him, and a pencil in his hand… sunlight was streaming through the window in front of him, one that he recognised quite well… it was the window of his bedroom, back at home…

He looked around… according to the cheap calendar by his side, it was in the middle of the summer holidays, almost two full years after he would have started at Hope’s Peak. So they weren’t at school then… but he ought to have Mondo’s contact details!

He looked around the room, and in his pockets for something, _anything_ he would have written down people’s addresses in… eventually, he realised he had a few phone numbers jotted down at the very back of his notebook… but none of them were Mondo’s… It was almost as if they weren’t friends this time… but _why?_

Well… that wouldn’t matter! Mondo’s memories would have been replaced with the _old_ timeline, so they’d still be friends! More than friends, even! Ishimaru just needed to figure out a way to contact him! But how? He doubted a gang leader would have his phone number in a telephone directory…

But… he was renowned enough that the _police_ would be likely to know where he lived… and he could hear his father working in the room next door…

“Father!” He didn’t even remember to _knock_ before barging into his father study in desperate excitement, “I need a favour!”

“Kiyotaka? What’s gotten into you all of a sudden? I thought you were studying!?” His father asked, “I hope you don’t expect me to understand that maths homework of yours…”

“Ah! No, no! Nothing like _that!”_ He laughed, “I just need to know where Oowada lives!”

His father was staring at him as if he was mad…

“Ah… Oowada. From my class at Hope’s Peak?” He clarified… hoping that wasn’t a completely inaccurate statement in this new timeline…

“The _gang leader?_ Why do you want to know where _he_ lives? Doesn’t he give you enough problems _during_ term time?”

“I… I’m not sure I could explain it… but could you please just trust me?” He pleaded…

“Well… I suppose…” His father relented, still confused. “So long as you don’t tell anyone where you got this address…” He added.

“Thank you!” Ishimaru cried, as his father looked up a file and started copying something from it…

Several hours later, Ishimaru pulled up on his bicycle outside a ramshackle house, with an impressive looking motorcycle parked next to the front door… this was it! It even had the right logo! This was Mondo’s house! He and Mondo were going to be together!

He wiped the sweat from his brow and instantly felt nervous. Perhaps he shouldn’t have cycled the distance? Maybe he should at least wait until he’d cooled down a little…?

No! That was ridiculous! They’d been waiting to be _alive_ for _months!_ Mondo wasn’t going to want to put that off just because Ishimaru was a little over-exerted!

…He still nervously tried to smooth down his uniform as he knocked sharply on the front door… and nervously fiddled with his collar before knocking again, harder this time, when the door failed to open…

Where _was_ he? Hadn’t he been expecting Ishimaru to come to his house? He obviously hadn’t left for _his,_ because his _bike_ was still outside!

He pounded loudly on the door, as much to work of his anxious frustration as to get the attention of the occupant, but…

“Geez, calm the fuck down!” Mondo shouted, his voice seeming deeper than before… but then, they’d have grown _normally_ over the last two years, so that wasn’t completely unexpected…was it?

What _was_ unexpected was the _black_ hair, styled in a much _shorter_ pompadour than he’d expected… not to mention the _taller_ height, the _white_ clothes instead of black, the _black_  eyes instead of lilac… and the scowl of confusion and unrecognition…

“What the fuck do _you_ want?”

“D… _Daiya_ Oowada?” Ishimaru asked.

“Yeah. Who the fuck are _you?_ ”

( _“He gave his life for mine”)_

No… _how!?_ How had had that _changed!?_ _Why_ had that changed!? How had stopping Kamukura resulted in Daiya no longer sacrificing himself for his brother? Why had _Mondo_ been the one to die this time? Why hadn’t he realised this could have happened!? Why had he gone along with this, thinking he could just magically fix everything by saving the right person! In all his attempts, all he’d done was put Mondo closer and closer to _death_ and now he’d changed things so he couldn’t even _speak_ to Mondo anymore, because Mondo would have died at least  _two years_ ago and there would be no more chances, no more going back in time, no more _talking_ to Mondo, _ever,_ because he’d been _stupid_ enough to think he could have _everything_ and instead he’d lost the _one person_ he actually needed _._. _._ _forever…_

_“AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> (I bet you all hate me right now)


	27. (Daiya POV)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're still reading this after last chapter's ending, thank you for coming back!

What. The. _Fuck!?_

Who the hell _was_ this weirdo? And why the hell had he started crying and screaming at the sight of him? Who had he been _expecting_ to see open the door? Other than Mondo?

Wait… hang on… Was this part of Mondo’s _joke?_ Fuckin’ hell, he’d really gone all out with _this_ bullshit prank! He’d even hired an actor to pretend to be freaked out that Daiya was alive in this ‘new timeline’ of his!?

“ _TAKA!”_ And here he was, running down the stairs, pretending to give a shit about this nerdy-looking weirdo screaming at their front door, who was doing a bang-up job of pretending to be relieved and shocked that _both_ Oowada brothers had survived the ‘last’ race they’d had… y’know, the one Daiya had mapped out to be totally safe…

“M-Mondo…? Y-y-you… you said he… I though you…” The guy stammered as Mondo ran down the hall and … _fuck!_ He even shoved Daiya out of the way to go and give the guy a hug!

“Yeah… I don’t get it either…” Mondo was carrying on the act… “But I ain’t fucking complaining!”

“Bro… _seriously,_ A for effort an’ all… but I’m still not believing this horseshit about time-travelling ghosts!” Daiya exclaimed for about the third time that morning…

“W-what’s he…”

“I tried ta tell him what happened, but he thinks I’m making it up!” Mondo griped… or pretended to.

“Did you try to contact Kamila? She probably could have proved it to him…” The other guy asked him, as he started to wipe up his tears.

“Uhh… No. Ta be honest, I was starting ta get really worried about _you!”_ Mondo started to help him wipe the tears as well, gently running his thumb over the guys face…

“M-me? Why were you worried about _me?”_

“’Cause there’s _fuck all_ in my room about you!” Mondo cried. “I was starting ta think you’d died before going ta Hope’s Peak or summat!”

“Ah… Until I saw your brother, I just assumed we hadn’t become friends this time…”

“Why the fuck _wouldn’t_ we have!?” Mondo snapped at him.

“Well…” The guy looked up in Daiya’s direction, cautiously. “Perhaps this time… you didn’t need a… a Kyoudai…”

 _The hell!?_ Were they seriously trying to claim that there was a chance in _hell_ that Mondo woulda called this _nerd,_ who was wearing a _school uniform and_ _disciplinarian band_ in the _middle of summer holidays,_ his _kyoudai!?_

“Well… _shit…_ I didn’t think of that…” Mondo laughed…  “I almost had a fuckin heart attack when Daiya didn’t know ya…”

…Well, Daiya had to admit he’d done a pretty good job of _acting_ like he was in a panic at the time.

“Hahaha… Well… I imagine you _heard_ my reaction, along with half the street…” The nerd blushed… was it possible to blush on cue?

“Y-yeah… Sorry for scarin’ ya like that…” Mondo muttered.

“Just… don’t do it again!” The other boy gripped Mondo even tighter than before.

Well… Daiya seriously _did_ have to give this joke A for effort… they were _still_ trying to keep it up, even now… and there was _another_ dude coming up the path to the house as well… what was this, a _second_ actor?

“Ah… Excuse me? I’m guessing you two are Oowada and Ishimaru?” The man asked, as he arrived. Well, good to know the other kids name at least…

Would have been nice to know _his_ name as well, because Jesus _fuck,_ everything about this guy seemed larger than life… He had a huge ginger beard and hair, and he was fucking _built!_ Daiya was surprised he hadn’t had to sew together two different trench coats to make that thing he was wearing…

Which made him look all the more ridiculous, carrying a tiny black cat in a red scarf…

“ _Sissel!”_ The two kids cried as they looked at him… and then all three of them _froze…_

What? What the fuck _was_ this? Daiya waved his hands in front of Mondo’s face… and then _clapped_ his hands right in front of him… and even moved his finger until it was about millimetres from poking his brother in the eye and Mondo didn’t move a muscle… how the fuck was he _doing_ that…?

Well, he was going to play _this_ game, Daiya would just do something he _couldn’t_ ignore! Where was a pen…?

…three minutes of childish doodling later, Mondo _still_ hadn’t responded…

“Well… that’s the hearts drawn on your cheek!” Huh… _nothing…_ “Okay, so for forehead, I’m thinking I’ll go traditional draw a big ol’ _cock_ there!”

…Shit. Could Mondo really not hear him? Had he… _taken_ something, that had just knocked him out with his eyes open, or something? Should Daiya be calling an ambulance?

“Seriously, Mondo, if this is a joke it ain’t fucking funny anymore!” He shook his brother a few times… fuck, fuck, fuck! What was he supposed to tell the emergency line to explain _this?_

But then, all of a sudden, Mondo started moving, acting like he _hadn’t_ just been frozen in place for five minutes! “…Right, so how are we gonna…?”

“AHAHAHAHA…!” Ishimaru interrupted him, laughing at the state Daiya had left his face in.

“Wh-what?” Mondo looked at him.

“It… your face…!” Ishimaru giggled, looking at the pen in Diaya’s hand. “It’s… did you draw on him?”

“Uhh…” Welp, caught red handed…

“What…?” Mondo rubbed a hand on his cheek, and scowled at the smudge of ink it left on his hand. “Oh for fucks sake, Daiya! I’m tryina have a serious conversation about how to explain this Ghost stuff to ya and ya draw fuckin’ dicks or something all over me!?”

“It… it’s just flowers and hearts!” Ishimaru smiled at him, “It… it’s quite _cute,_ actually!”

…A _guy_ dared to call Mondo _cute?_ To his _face?_ Man, that guy was getting smeared against the _wall…_

“Y-ya _think?”_ Mondo blushed instead?

“Yes! See, there’s some flowers here…” He traced his fingers over the first thing Daiya had drawn, “And some stars here… and lots of little hearts…”

Mondo grabbed his wrist before he could trace his finger over _those…_ probably ‘cause _that_ would have been gay as hell…

…But still not as gay as what he did _instead,_ which was to use his other hand to pull Ishimaru’s face towards his own and _kiss_ the guy…! And Ishimaru even did that stupid thing in the movies, where the girl gets all surprised at first but then relaxes and starts smooching back… And they really _were_ going for it and everything…

“The _fuck_ are you doing!?” Daiya cried at them, which made Mondo pull back hastily and Ishimaru look down at his knees in embarrassment… “ _This_ is how you tell me you’re gay? You tell me you’ve been living in a world where I’m _dead,_ get your boyfriend to scream the house down when he _sees_ me, act like you’ve turned _brain-dead_ for five minutes so I almost have a fuckin heart attack and then you act like nothing happened and _kiss a dude?”_

“Uhh… That…”

“Seriously, Mondo I don’t give fuck _who_ you’re screwing! If it means you quit making yourself look like a dumbass every time you see a pretty girl, then you can screw the nerd six ways to Sunday for all I care!” Daiya laughed, “Next time quit all the weird bullshit and just _tell_ me these things, alright?”

“Uhh…”

“Ahahaha! You’ve got us!” The dude with the cat laughed heavily, “See… I told you boys you didn’t have to worry!” He patted them both on the shoulder, “I’ll see you two back at Hope’s Peak…” He added, before walking off while shaking his head at the pair of them, who were blushing furiously and nervously inching their hand towards each other…

Honestly, Mondo could be such a dumb kid sometimes… But at least he seemed happy now…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gonna admit I'm kinda surprised no one in the comments picked up on the fact that between them, Takaaki and Daiya proved that Mondo must be alive in the last chapter...  
> (Takaaki agrees that 'Oowada' IS in Kiyo's class, but then Daiya asks him who he IS, therefore there's an Oowada who'd NOT Daiya in Kiyo's class)  
> I kind of foreshadowed this back in chapter 11, when Mondo tells Chihiro about Daiya's death and mentions that an unexpected barrier in the road forced the race onto a more dangerous route. Kamakura's ghost caused that barrier to be there, so without him being around in the timeline anymore, the accident Daiya died in never happened.
> 
> Anyway, thanks for reading (assuming anyone came back after that evil cliffhanger of mine last chapter... an author's gotta have SOME fun, right?). The next chapter will be an epilogue to wrap things up/ show how things worked out in the new timeline and then this fic will be over! (I'm going to miss having regular updates...)


	28. (Present Makoto Ver. 4 POV)

“…And, I suppose it’s a credit to the high standards of our class, that my naming as valedictorian wasn’t a completely obvious choice from the onset…” Byakuya continued his speech, probably with a smug expression on his face.

Not that Makoto could see. He’d had the bad luck of being sat right behind Mondo…

 _“Fucking smug asshole!”_ The biker snapped under his breath, _“He knows damn well YOU oughta to be the one up there!”_

 _“Shhh!”_ Kiyotaka whispered back at him, giving him a kiss on the cheek to calm him down. _“Byakuya beat my score fair and square…”_

_“Yeah, but… I still say it’s fucking bullshit!”_

_“QUIET!”_

Mondo reluctantly settled down. Not that Makoto couldn’t understand what he was talking about. Kitotaka had put in enough effort over the _first_ two years of school to be named best student each and every time they were tested, even with ‘ _the esteemed Byakuya_ _Togami’_ as one of his competitors.

But then he’d been involved in some freak accident, which had somehow wiped out his memories of the previous two years, putting him two years behind the rest of them, and no amount of effort in the _world_ could have let him catch up to Togami after _that!_

Or at least, that was what he’d _told_ everyone had happened. For some reason, every time Kiyotaka said it, it made Makoto feel like he’d got it _wrong…_ but he’d never really had any evidence that could prove _why_ he felt that way…

But it didn’t help that Kiyotaka seemed to have suddenly changed into a completely different person to the one Makoto had met at the start of school… For starters, Makoto was pretty sure that if anyone had told Kiyotaka at the _start_ of their time together that he’d ended up two _years_ behind everyone else, he’d would have had a mental breakdown at the thought. But after it had happened, Kiyotaka just seemed happier than ever! Still as _determined_ as he ever was, but his determination seemed to be fuelled by the pure _joy_ that he was alive to have the _chance_ to do great things, not the desperate need to be respected and succeed like it had been before.

And, okay, maybe that was just because he had friends now… But that in itself led to a whole _new_ set of questions! Such as _how the heck had he suddenly started dating MONDO!?_ And why had they _both_ suddenly started buying into Yasuhiro’s nonsense? And why did it sometimes seem like Kiyotaka and Mondo both remembered something _bad_ happening to them, even though it hadn’t? And why had all three of them suddenly made friends with some random girl who had nothing to do with Hope’s Peak, and why did they sometimes, when they thought no one was listening in, joke about her being ‘The Ultimate Physicist’?

Sometimes Makoto wondered if Mondo had been involved in the same accident as Kiyotaka… Mondo had never said anything about it, but he’d spent the first two years of school skipping class, so it wasn’t as if anyone could have noticed from how well he was doing in school. If anything, _he’d_ started doing even better than before, once the third year started, suddenly deciding to throw himself into carpentry and spend time _studying_.

Of course, _that_ might have been because it was the only time he got to spend with Kiyotaka… The Moral Compass had been _determined_ not to let the two years of missing memories slow him down, and he’d put in an insane amount of effort to try and catch up to Byakuya!

So much so, that it was heart-wrenching to see how close he’d come to actually beating the heir’s score at the end of the year… at least, heart-wrenching to everyone but Kiyotaka himself, who had happily congratulated Byakuya and then scolded everyone _else_ in class for failing to beat someone they had a two-year head start on…

Everyone else but _Mondo,_ though. Another thing that felt… _off_ with Kiyotaka’s story…

“...And I can assure you all that, even if by some idiocy, any of you fail at your goals, the Togami family will be there to rescue you from mediocrity. But I’d prefer not to, so good luck, 78th class of Hope’s Peak!” Byakuya’s speech _finally_ ended…

_“Like he knows fuck all about rescuing people…”_

_“MONDO!”_

Oh yeah, another weird thing about those two. Mondo’s weird insistence, and Kiyotaka’s harsh denial, that Kiyotaka was some sort of hero, even though even _Kyoko_ had never found any evidence of anything of the sort…

Haahh… He should probably stop worrying about it all… but for some reason it just _nagged_ at him, like the answer was always just on the tip of his tongue, even as his own family were congratulating him and Kyoko on their graduations now that all the ceremony was done with…

“Oh! Look, Mondo! There’s Kamila!” Kiyotaka suddenly pointed out their friend, who was standing outside the gate with her pet cat…

And, if Yasuhiro’s’s nonsense was to be believed, the ghost of her dead dog as well… honestly, Makoto couldn’t _believe_ Kiyotaka let him get away with scamming her into thinking he could talk to her _pets!_

“Oh, cool! Lets go say hi then!” Mondo suggested, standing up and dragging Kiyotaka past his older brother…

“Well, just for a moment then!” Kiyotaka agreed, “So you two _behave_ yourselves!” He added, briefly turning around to face the older Oowada and his own father before heading away.

“…Did you just get told off by your own _kid?”_ Oowada smirked at Ishimaru, as soon as the younger pair was out of earshot.

“That was mostly aimed at _you!”_ The policeman snapped back, “Given you’re likely to still be in a ridiculous mood about that member of your gang!”

“Its not ‘ridiculous’ to be pissed that you arrested one of my friends for no good reason!”

“He was _speeding_ in a _school zone!”_

“He was _3 miles_ over the limit! During the _middle of classes!_ No kids gonna be running on the street _then!”_

“There’s no guarantee…”

“Bullshit! You’re just pissed off that he splashed you the other week!”

“How _dare_ you imply that I’d use my position to…!”

“Obviously you two aren’t friends then…” Kyoko commented.

 _“Gods_ no!” _“_ The _fuck_ we are!”

“Uhh... in that case, how did Kiyotaka and Mondo start dating then?” Makoto asked.

“Didn’t they hook up at school?” Oowada asked, confused.

“No.” Kyoko told him. “They went from hating each other at the end of year two, to already dating when year 3 started.

“Hmm… I remember him suddenly asking me for Oowada’s address one day during the summer… and then he introduced Mondo to me straight after going to visit there…” Ishimaru explained, “But that was around the time of his accident, so I’m not sure how clear his memory is about it… Your brother’s really never mentioned _anything_ to you about it?”

“Hah! The only thing _he_ ever told me was some bullshit about him turning into a time-travelling ghost!”

Wait… what was that!?

 _“Excuse me!?”_ Ishimaru cried.

“Don’t ask _me!_ He came up with this whole thing that there was this other world where everything got destroyed…” Oowada laughed, “Hell, your kid even played along with him!”

…Why did that sound like it could actually be… _right?_

“…Kiyotaka’s memory must already have been affected at that point!” Ishimaru insisted. “There’s no way he’d believe in something so ridiculous as time travelling ghosts otherwise!”

…Not unless he’d _met_ one? Or maybe _been_ one? Urg… Makoto’s head was starting to hurt…

“I ain’t saying he _believed_ it, I’m saying he played along!” Oowada sighed, “Acting like he was afraid Mondo was _dead_ ‘cause _I_ was alive or some bullshit nonsense…”

…Wouldn’t that make sense though? For… some reason… that was _almost there…_

“But… even as a _joke,_ it’s not the sort of thing Kiyotaka would perpetuate… I mean, time travel is impossible, isn’t it?” Ishimaru frowned.

“It’s an interesting question…” Kyoko started… and the rest of her sentence flashed into his mind and out of his mouth before even _she_ could say it…

“…After all, how would _we_ know?” If it works, we won’t have any memory of having tried it…”

“…What are you talking about?” Kyoko asked, “We’re not talking about trying it ourselves…”

“Uhh…” She was right… what he’d said hadn’t made any sense… “But, didn’t you say that one time?”

 _“When?”_ She asked him.

_On the island… with Byakuya and Yasuhiro… but even then he’d known what she was going to say…_

_Because she’d said it in the bathroom, when they were taking Mondo and Kiyotaka’s ghosts to Sayaka’s corpse…_

_Because the pair had killed themselves next to the air purifier, in order to become ghosts and save her…_

_Because Mondo had told Kiyotaka that’s what he should have done the first time he’d woken up as a ghost…_

_Because Celestia had convinced Hifumi to bludgeon Kiyotaka to death in the physics lab…_

_Because he’d gone mad with grief after Mondo had been executed…_

_Because he’d snapped and killed Chihiro…_

_Because he’d needed to hide the fact that his brother had died saving his life…_

_Because they’d been told they were trapped in the school and had to kill each other…_

_Because they’d all forgot that they barricaded themselves in there…_

_Because the world had been destroyed… by despair…_

How the HELL had he forgot all THAT!? Everything made _sense_ now! There’d been no ‘freak accident’! Kiyotaka’s mind had jumped across from another timeline where his school memories had been erased! _That’s_ why he couldn’t remember two whole years! And the same was true for Mondo! _That’s_ why he always insisted Kiyotaka was a hero, because he’d helped _save the world!_

…And no one remembered he’d done it…

“Makoto, sweetie? Are you alright?” His mother asked.

“Uhh… yeah! I’m fine! Uhh… I just need to get up and walk about a bit!” He lied… Well, it was only half a lie… he _did_ need to walk!

He needed to walk over to Kiyotaka and Mondo and thank them for changing everything… And then he’d have to apologise to Yasuhiro for not believing him about the ghosts he always said he could see…

“My purification tech worked great, so now they’re trusting me to set my own research goals… I’m getting some new equipment that’ll help me try and make something that can mimic Hiro’s…” Jowd was talking about her job at… whatever branch of government research she _actually_ worked at. But then she cut herself short once she noticed Makoto approaching. “Umm… hello?”

Kiyotaka and Mondo turned around to look at him…

“Ah! Makoto! Did you want something?” Kiyotaka asked him.

“…I just remembered the other timelines.” Makoto admitted.

 _“HOW!?”_ Jowd was the first to react, “That shouldn’t be possible!”

“Wait, hang on a sec… What _exactly_ did you remember?” Mondo asked, skeptically.

“Ah… I remember the Tragedy, and the killing game, and you two becoming ghosts and getting to Kamakura’s corpse…”

“That must have been quite a shock…” Kiyotaka told him, “Are you alright?”

“Are you _kidding!?_ I just remembered a remembered a world where there were crazed rioters were killing people in the streets and half my friends ended up dead!” Makoto cried… “Of course I’m alright!”

“I beg your pardon?” Kiyotaka asked in shock.

“I just remembered how bad the world _could_ have been… _And_ how lucky I am that it’s _not_ like that! _”_ Makoto clarified, “I just wanted to say thanks to you guys…”

“Ah… that’s not necessary!” Kiyotaka laughed, “I’m sure anyone would have done the same!”

“Yeah… and Missile had a _way_ longer wait than _I_ did…” Jowd added… which Makoto didn’t understand at _all…_

“Ah, c’mon you two!” Mondo sighed at them, “He’s right! Ya saved the _fucking world!_ It’s about _time_ someone gave ya some credit for it!”

“Mondo, I’ve told you a hundred times, I have received more than I could ever _need_ as a result of that! _”_ Kiyotaka insisted, “Besides, you helped as well!”

“Yeah, and I got _Daiya_ back!” Mondo pointed out, “But _you_ still came back to the life you’d had before… with everyone thinking your name’s worth shit…”

 _“But now I have the chance to FIX that!”_ Kiyotaka enthused, “And the air is _breathable,_ and there still _is_ a Prime Minister for me to be, and my graduation wasn’t dependent on my murdering a classmate!”

“Well… Yeah, okay… I mean, it’s nice to have a future that isn’t fucked up, and ta see the sky and you’ve got that internship at the Ministry of Justice…” Mondo relented a little. “But ya still ought have got some sorta _actual_ hero's reward for everything ya did.”

“But I did!” Kiyotaka announced, cheerfully.

“Ya… ya _did!?_ What was it!?” Mondo asked him.

A surprising wicked grin flashed across Kiyotaka’s face before he said _“This!”_ And pulled Mondo’s head down for a kiss…

“Oh boy, here they go again…” Jowd sighed as the pair played tongue hockey for a while.

“…I _meant,_ like, _money_ or something…” Mondo muttered, once Kiyotaka had finished, "Or more than, like, _four_ people saying thanks to ya."

“Having you back is worth all the money and gratitude in the world!” Kiyotaka told him, “I probably would have been happy enough if I’d stopped after I rescued you the first time!” His eyes went hazy for a short moment… “Ah… sorry… but in my defense, I didn’t _know_ about Kamila!” He added, addressing the… the air _around_ Kamila?

Was he talking to her dead dog? Guess Yasuhiro really  _hadn't_ made that up! Well, regardless…

“I’m glad you _did_ keep going… even though you almost lost everything!” Makoto told him, “Thanks, all of you!”

“Well… you’re welcome!” Kiyotaka conceded.

“… _Buuuuut_ now you’ve remembered about Ghosts Tricks, I'm going to have to insist you come into the office and sign a bunch of NDAs, and the government will want to keep an eye on you in case you decide to blab about this to anyone else…” Jowd told him, apologetically. “There are some job opportunities available though, if you prove to be trustworthy and are interested in it…”

So, by random luck, he’d yet again been put in a position where he was offered a difficult, but rewarding, chance to prove himself…

“Well, I might as well take advantage of the opportunity…” Makoto decided.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because I couldn't think of a way to work this explanation into the fic: Mondo manages to hide losing his memories from Daiya and the gang because Takemichi notices he's changed and Mondo tells him what happened and gets a refresher course in whats happened to the gang over the last two year.
> 
> But, anyway! That's the end of the fic! I hope you all liked it! Thank you all for reading this all the way through! Especially those of you who told me that you got into Ghost Trick specifically because of this fic! (I will totally blame you all when I write up my Ishimondo/Rainbow Brite crossover idea).


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